■ :•: : m&mw * 

































































































































































































































































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THE 

OLD MINE’S SECRET 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 







There was Dick, waving his hand tauntingly”—/.^ 18 



THE 

OLD MINE’S SECRET 


BY 

EDNA TURPIN 

AUTHOR OF “HONEY SWEET,” “PEGGY OF 
ROUNDABOUT LANE,” “TREASURE 
MOUNTAIN,” ETC. 


FRONTISPIECE BY 
GEORGE WRIGHT^ 


jl3eto gotfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1921 


All rights reserved 


2 * 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



Copyright, 1921, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. * 


Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1921. 


0C1 27 1921 / 


Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 


§>C!.AS30021 



* 

\r 


'V'V C 



TM.lr- Q -n 'l-S/l 


TO 

REBECCA BROCKENBROUGH 

AND 

TERRY LEE ROBERTS 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


CHAPTER I 

O -O-OH! oh me-e!” Dick made the sigh 
very sad and pitiful. 

His father did not seem to hear it. 
He tilted his chair farther back, perched his feet 
on the porch railing, and unfolded his newspaper. 

It was a mild April morning, and the Osborne 
family had drifted out on the porch,—Mr. Os¬ 
borne with his papers and Mrs. Osborne with her 
sewing; Sweet William was playing jackstraws 
with himself, Patsy sat on the steps with her 
back to the others, especially Dick, who, however, 
was pitying himself too much to notice her. 

“I always get blamed for everything I do,” 

he said mournfully, “but David-” 

“'House for War: Vote 373 to 50/” Mr. 
Osborne read the headline. “That is the answer 
to the President’s message four days ago. Now 
the Senate-” 

“Father! If you’ll just let me off to-day, I’ll 
work from school-out till dark every day next 

week. I certainly will. Father, please-” 

“Richard Randolph Osborne! You are to 





2 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


work your assigned part of the garden to-day,, to¬ 
day, without further pleas for postponement.’’ 
Mr. Osborne’s mild voice and red flabby face 
stiffened with determination. This was not the 
first week that Dick had neglected his garden 
task. 

“Yes, sir,” Dick answered meekly, wriggling 
a little. That was all he could do—wriggle a 
little—because he was made into a sort of mer¬ 
man by having an old Persian shawl wrapped 
about him, from the waist down. “I think you 
might let me off,” he persisted in an undertone; 
“just this one more time. If mother had patched 
my trousers last night—if she’d let me put on my 
Sundays now—I could get that hateful old gar¬ 
den worked this morning. I’ve got something 
else to do to-day, something awfully important.” 

“I’m sorry I forgot, son,” said his mother. “I 
certainly meant to mend them last night. I was 
reading, and forgot. I wish you had reminded 
me.” She took quicker stitches and her thread 
snarled so that she had to break it and begin 
again. “I am so sorry,” she repeated in the deli¬ 
cious voice that made her words seem as fresh 
and sweet as the red roses that fell from the 
mouth of the fairy-tale maiden. 

Mrs. Osborne was a dear, sunny-hearted little 
woman with dark hair, irregular features, and a 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


3 

vivid, eager face. She loved to read; indeed, she 
could no more resist a book than a toper could 
refuse a drink, but she was always so sorry and 
so ashamed when she neglected home duties that 
every one except the person who suffered from it 
forgave her freely. 

Patsy, Dick’s twin sister, came now to her 
mother’s defense. “It’s your fault, Dick,” she 
said. “It’s all your own fault. If you had locked 
the bookcase door, it would have reminded her 
there was something to do. And then she would 
have thought of the trousers.” 

“I forgot,” Dick confessed. That put him 
clearly in the wrong, and made him the crosser. 
He turned on his sister, growling: “What busi¬ 
ness is it of yours, miss? You please let my 
affairs alone and attend to your own. What are 
you doing, Patsy?” 

He tried to wriggle near enough to see, but 
Patsy made a face at him and ran into the yard. 
Dick was such a tease! She was not going to tell 
him that she had decided to be a poet and was 
composing a wonderful ballad. How surprised 
he would be when it came out in the Atlantic or 
St. Nicholas, with her name in big black letters— 
Pocahontas Virginia Osborne, as it was in the 
family Bible. Or would she have a pen-name, 
like ‘Marion Harland’? If she could think of a 


4 


THE OLD MINE S SECRET 


lovely original name- But perhaps she had 

better finish the poem first. 

She perched herself in the swing and chewed 
her pencil and read over the four lines she had 
written: 

“Johnny was a sailor, 

He was brave and bold; 

He thought he would make an adventure 
To find the North Pole. ,, 

She could not think of anything else to say, so 
she read that over again; and then again. While 
inspiration tarried, an interruption came. It 
took the shape of her small brother William with 
two of his followers—Hop-o-hop, a lame duck 
that he had adopted when its hen mother pecked 
it and cast it off, and Scalawag, a sand-colored, 
bob-tailed stray dog that had adopted him. 

“Hey, Patsy! I think I’ll give you a kiss.,” 
announced Sweet William, raising his fair, se¬ 
rious face to hers. “I think I might give you two 
kisses. You are so sweet. Patsy,” he went on 
coaxingly, “wouldn’t you want to lend me a pen¬ 
cil? Just one little minute, to make you a picture 
of a horse.” 

“Oh, Sweet William, you’re such a nuisance!” 
said Patsy. “I’m awfully busy. How can I ever 
finish this, if you bother me?” 

But she gave him pencil and paper, and sat 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 5 

swinging back and forth, looking idly about the 
spacious yard where the budding oaks made 
lacelike shadows, on that April morning. 

In the center of the yard was a great heap of 
bricks. That was the remains of Osborne’s Rest, 
the family mansion that had been burned in a raid 
during The War, as those southern Virginians 
called the War of Secession from which they 
dated everything. Since then, two generations 
of Osbornes had dwelt in The Roost,, a cottage 
in one corner of the yard. It was now the home 
of Patsy, her father and mother, her two 
brothers, Dick and Sweet William, and a mother¬ 
less cousin, David Spotswood. 

The big front gate opened on The Street, the 
one thoroughfare of The Village. There were a 
church, a tavern, two shops, a dozen frame and 
brick dwellings set far back in spacious grounds, 
and the county Court-house in a square by itself. 
Behind the Court-house rambled The Back Way 
which had once expected to become a street, but 
remained always The Back Way with only a 
blacksmith’s shop, a basket-maker’s shed, and a 
few cabins on it. 

A century and a half before, three royal-grant 
estates, Broad Acres and Larkland and Mattoax, 
cornered at a stone now on Court-house Green. 
These plantations had long ago been divided into 


6 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

small farms; but in The Village still lived Wil¬ 
sons and Mayos and Osbornes who counted as 
outsiders all whose grandfathers were not born 
in the neighborhood and the kinship. 

While we have been looking about, Sweet Wil¬ 
liam lay flat on the ground, holding his tongue 
between his teeth, to assist his artistic efforts. 

“Look at my horse, Patsy!” he crowed, holding 
up the paper. 

“Hm-m! I don’t call that much like a horse,” 
observed Patsy. 

Sweet William’s face clouded, and then bright¬ 
ened. “Tell you what!” he said. “It’ll be a cow. 
I’ll kick out one hind leg and put a bucket here. 
Now! She’s spilt all the milk.” 

Patsy laughed; and then one knew that she 
was pretty, seeing the merry crinkles around her 
twinkling hazel eyes, and the upward curve of 
her lips that brought out dimples on her freckled 
pink cheeks. 

“I love you when you laugh, Patsy!” ex¬ 
claimed Sweet William, hugging her knees. “You 
may have my picture. And I’ll sit in the swing 
with you.” 

“You and Scalawag and Hop-o-hop may have 
the swing,” said Patsy. “I’m going in. I’ll finish 
my poem to-morrow. I want to find out—I think 
Dick has a secret.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 7 

She jumped out of the swing, gave Sweet Wil¬ 
liam’s ear a “love pinch,” and strolled back to the 
porch. 

“Dick,” she asked in an offhand way, “what 
are you going to do with that candle you got this 
morning?” 

Dick’s gloom relaxed and he winked tantaliz- 
ingly. 

“You wish you knew,” he said. “But—you’ll 
—never—find—out. Ah, ha-a-a!” 

“Don’t you tell, Mister Dick!” said Patsy. “I 
don’t want you to tell. I’d rather find out for 
myself. And I certainly will find out, sir. You 
just see if I don’t.” 

Mr. Osborne still had his nose in his day-old 
paper; news younger than that seldom, came to 
The Village. “ 'Army plans call for a million 
men the first year.’ That is a gigantic under¬ 
taking, Miranda, and—” 

“It certainly is,” she agreed placidly. “Mayo, 
Black Mayo has bought some more pigeons; and 
Polly says he’ll not tell what he paid for them, so 
she knows it’s some absurd sum that he can’t 
afford.” 

“Yes.” Her husband agreed absently. “And 
a million men means not only men, but arms, 
equipment, food. Bless my life! Is that clock 
striking—it can’t be!—is it ten? And I here 


8 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

instead of at the Court-house.” He got up and 
stuffed the newspaper and a Congressional Rec¬ 
ord in his pocket. 

“What are you going to do, dear?” asked his 
wife. 

“We want to find out if the Board of Super¬ 
visors can appropriate money to send our Con¬ 
federate veterans to the Reunion in June. There 
have been so many unusual expenses, bridges 
washed away and that smallpox quarantine, that 
funds are low. I hope they can raise the requisite 
amount.” 

“Of course they will. They must,” Mrs. 
Osborne said quickly and positively. “Why, 
the yearly reunion—seeing old comrades, be¬ 
ing heroized, recalling the glorious past— 
is the one bright spot in their gray old 
lives.” 

“Mr. Tavis and Cap’n Anderson were talking 
about the Reunion at the post office yesterday,” 
said Dick. “They are just crazy about having 
it in Washington. Cap’n has never been there. 
But he was telling how near he and old Jube 
Early came to it, in ’64.” 

“What an experience it will be, taking peace¬ 
ful possession in old age of the Capital they cam¬ 
paigned against when they were soldier boys, 
over fifty years ago!” said Mrs. Osborne. “Cer- 


THE OLD MINE'S SECRET 9 

tainly they must go. How many are there,, 
Mayo?” 

“Nine in our district,” answered her husband. 
“Last year there were sixteen. Three have died, 
and four are bedridden.” 

“Ah! so few are left; so many have passed on.” 
Mrs. Osborne glanced through the open door at 
a portrait, her father in a colonel's gray uni¬ 
form. “Of course they must go, our nine old 
soldiers.” 

“Sure!” said Dick. “If there isn't money 
enough, we boys can help raise it. Mr. Tavis 
says he’ll pay me to plant corn, afternoons and 
Saturdays. I wasn’t thinking about doing it. 
But our old Confeds mustn’t miss their Reunion.” 

“Good boy! that’s the right spirit,” exclaimed 
Mrs. Osborne. 

She adored the memory of her gallant father 
and of the Confederate cause to which he had de¬ 
voted himself. The quiet, uneventful years had 
brought no new deep, inspiring interests to the 
little Southern community. Its love and loyalty 
clung to the past. To the children the Lost Cause 
was a tradition as heroic and romantic as the 
legends of Roland and Arthur; but it was a tradi¬ 
tion linked to reality by the old gray-clad men 
who had fought with Lee and Jackson. As Jones 
and Tavis and Walthall, they were ordinary old 


io 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


men, rather tiresome and absurd; but call them 
"Confederate veterans’' and they were trans¬ 
formed to heroes whom it was an honor to serve. 
Dick, shirking the work that meant food for 
his family,, would toil gladly to send them to their 
Reunion. 

"They must have this, perhaps their last—” 

Mrs. Osborne paused, and her husband said: 
"We’ll manage it; we’ll manage it somehow. If 
there is a deficit, we may be able to make it up 
by private subscription. Perhaps I’ll get a case 
next term of court, and can make a liberal con¬ 
tribution.” He laughed. 

Mr. Osborne—called Red Mayo to distinguish 
him from a dark-haired cousin of the same name, 
called Black Mayo—was a lawyer more by pro¬ 
fession than by practice; there were not enough 
law crumbs in The Village, he said, to support a 
sparrow. 

He strolled toward the Court-house while Mrs. 
Osborne took her last hurried stitches. Then she 
handed the patched trousers to her son, who rolled 
indoors and put them on. He went into the 
garden and gloomily eyed the neglected square 
where peas and potatoes and onions were merely 
green lines among crowding weeds. 

"I certainly can’t finish it this morning,” he 
growled. "There’s too much to do.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


11 


“If you work hard, you can finish by sun¬ 
down,” said his cousin, David Spotswood, who 
was planting- a row of beets on the other side of 
the garden. 

“I can’t work after dinner,” said Dick. “I’ve 
got something else to do. I just can’t finish it 
to-day.” 

“You’d better,” said Patsy, who had followed 
him into the garden. “When father says 'Rich¬ 
ard’ and shuts his mouth—so! he means busi¬ 
ness. Say., Dick! What were you getting that 
candle for? What are you going to do? Let us 
go with you, Anne Lewis and me, and I’ll help 
you here.” 

“You help!” Dick spoke in his most superior 
masculine manner. “Girls haven’t any business 
in gardens. They ought to stay in the house and 
make bed-quilts. They’re too afraid of dirty 
hands and freckled faces.” 

Patsy flared up and answered so quickly that 
her words stepped on one another’s heels. 
“That’s mean and unfair! You know I hate 
gloves and bonnets, and I just wear them because 
mother makes me. But anyway, sir, I think 
they’re nicer than great-grandmother’s shawl for 
trousers.” 

She went back up the boxwood-bordered 
walk. 


12 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


‘Til keep my eyes on you, Mr. Richard Ran¬ 
dolph Osborne/’ she said to herself. “Where 
you go to-day, I’ll follow.” 

Halfway up the long walk, she came upon 
Sweet William, sitting on the ground, holding a 
maple bough over his head. 

“Won’t you come to our picnic, Patsy?” 
he said. “Me and Scalawag are having a 
loverly picnic in the woods down by Tinkling 
Water.” 

“No, thank you,,” said Patsy. “I want to see 
Anne Lewis about going somewhere after din¬ 
ner.” 

“Where?” asked Sweet William. 

“I don’t know—till I find out,” laughed Patsy. 
“But Anne and I will do that; we certainly will.” 

“I wish Anne was staying here,” Sweet Wil¬ 
liam said wistfully. 

“So do I,” agreed Patsy. “Easter holiday is 
too short to divide with Ruth. Oh! I’ll be so glad 
when it’s summer and Anne comes to stay a long 
time.” 

“It isn’t ever a long time where Anne is,” said 
Sweet William. “I’m going with you to see 
her, Patsy, and I’ll have my picnic another 
day.” 

They went ofif and left Dick raking and weed¬ 
ing and hoeing very diligently; but, working his 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


13 

best, he had not half finished his task when the 
dinner bell rang. He surveyed the garden with 
a scowl. 

“It’ll take hours and hours to get it done,” he 
said. “And then it would be too late to go where 
I’m going. Maybe I can work the potato patch 
after supper.” 

“You can’t,” said David, who had a straight¬ 
forward way of facing facts. 

“Oh! maybe I can,” said Dick, who had a pic¬ 
turesque way of evading them. “You might 
help me. You might work on it awhile after 
dinner.” 

“Thank you! I’ve something else to do. I’m 
going to harrow my corn acre. I want to plant 
it next week,” said David, who was a blue-ribbon 
member of the Boys’ Corn Club. 

At the dinner table the boys were joined by 
Sweet William, Patsy, and Anne Lewis,, a cousin 
who was spending her Easter holiday in The Vil¬ 
lage. The two girls watched Dick like hawks, 
and jumped up from the table as soon as he went 
out of the dining room. He hurried to the little 
upstairs room he shared with David that was 
called the “tumble-up room” because the steps 
were so steep. Presently he came down and 
showed off the things he was putting in his 
pockets—a candle, a box of matches, and a ball of 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


H 

stout twine. He sharpened his hatchet and fas¬ 
tened it to his belt. 

“Yah! You wish you knew what that’s for,” 
he said, with a derisive face at Patsy and then at 
Anne. 

He strutted across the yard toward the front 
gate, but he was not to march off in undisturbed 
triumph. 

“Dick! uh Dick!” called his mother. “Remem¬ 
ber you’ve your garden work to finish.” 

“Yes’m.” He scowled, then he said doggedly: 
“There’s something else I’ve promised myself 
to do first.” 

Anne and Patsy waited only to see that he 
turned up, not down, The Street; then they 
ran around The Back Way and came out just 
behind him at the church; there The Street 
turned to a road which led past the mill and 
on to Redville. Dick walked quickly, and the 
girls hurried after him; then he walked slow¬ 
ly, and they loitered so as to keep just be¬ 
hind him. 

“Where are you going?” he turned and chal¬ 
lenged them. 

“Oh! we might go to the mill to see Cousin 
Giles, or to Larkland to look at Cousin Mayo’s 
new pigeons, or to Happy Acres,” answered 
Patsy. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 15 

Dick strode on, and the girls trotted be¬ 
hind him, making amicable efforts at con¬ 
versation. 

“Steve Tavis has gone fishing with John and 
Baldie Eppes,” Anne remarked. “He said we 
girls might go, too. But Patsy and I thought 
there might be something—something more fun 
to do.” 

No answer. 

Patsy made an effort. “Dick,” she said, “I 
hope you’ll finish your garden work to-day. 
Father’s tired of excuses and he’s made up his 
mind for punishing. But even if we do get home 
late, I can help you.” 

Silence. 

“It’s a mighty nice day,” Patsy went on plead¬ 
ingly, “to—to do outdoor things. You say your¬ 
self I’m as good as a boy to have around. I 
wouldn’t be in the way at all; and I could hold 
the candle for you.” 

By this time they were at the mill where the 
Larkland road and the Happy Acres path turned 
from the highway. Dick kept to the main road 
and the girls followed. He stopped and faced 
them. 

“You said you were going to the mill, or Lark- 
land, or Happy Acres. Trot along!” 

“I said we might go there,” Patsy amended. 


i6 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Or we might go—’most anywhere. Do let us 
go with you; please, Dick.” 

“Where?” 

“Oh! wherever you are going. We’ll not tell.” 

“You certainly will not,” he declared; “for a 
mighty good reason: you are not going to know 
anything to tell.” 

Patsy’s eyes flashed. “We’ll show you,” she 
said. “We are going to follow you, like your 
shadow. You know good and well I can run as 
fast as you. Now take your choice, sir; let us 
go with you, or give up and toddle home and 
finish your task so as not to get punished.” 

“Hm!” he jeered. “If I’ve got something on 
hand good enough to take punishment for, it’s 
too good to spoil with girls tagging along.” 

He walked briskly up the road. Anne and 
Patsy followed him for a silent mile—up and 
down hills scarred with red gulleys, through 
woods, by brown plowed fields and green grain 
land. They passed several log cabins; the Spen¬ 
cer place, an old mansion amid tumbled-down out¬ 
buildings; Gordan Jones’s trim new house gay 
with gables and fresh paint. Then they came to 
an old farmhouse surrounded by neglected fields. 

“Why, that door’s open!” Anne remarked with 
surprise. “Is somebody living at the old Tolli¬ 
ver place?” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


17 

“A new man; Mr. Smith. He came here last 
winter,” explained Patsy. 

“Somebody new in the neighborhood!” laughed 
Anne. “Doesn’t that seem queer? What sort 
of folks are they?” 

“Um-mm; unfolksy,” said Patsy. “There’s 
just Mr. Smith, and his nephew Albert that goes 
to our school. We’ve never got acquainted with 
Albert. He’s sort of stand-offish; not as if he 
wanted to be, but as if he were afraid.” 

“Afraid of what?” asked Anne. 

“Oh! I don’t know. Nothing. I reckon he’s 
just shy.” 

“What sort of man is Mr. Smith?” inquired 
Anne. 

“Ugly; and grins. He’s away from home most 
of the time. He’s a salesman or agent of some 
kind. Dick,” Patsy returned to a more interest¬ 
ing subject, “do please tell us what you are going 
to do.” 

“We-ell,” Dick began as if he were about to 
yield reluctantly; then he interrupted himself 
eagerly: “Oh! look at that squirrel!” 

Their eyes followed his pointing finger, and 
crying, “Easy marks!” he darted into a dense 
thicket of pines on the other side of the road. 
The girls followed quickly, but he made good use 
of his moment’s start and they caught only 


18 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

glimpses of him here and there behind the trees. 

“Run, Anne!” Patsy called presently. “To the 
left. Here! Let’s head him off!” 

They ran around a thick clump of pines to 
meet him—and he was not there. He did not 
seem to be anywhere. He had vanished as com¬ 
pletely as if the earth had opened and swallowed 
him. 

“We may as well give up,” Anne sighed at 
last. 

“Yes,” Patsy agreed reluctantly. “I reckon 
he’s miles away by this time.” 

Crestfallen and disappointed, they went back 
to the road and started slowly down the hill. 

Then a red-brown head rose out of a heap of 
pine brush, so cautiously that it did not disturb 
the woodpecker drumming on a nearby stump. A 
pair of merry brown eyes watched the girls till 
they were at a safe distance; then Dick, to the 
terror and hasty flight of the woodpecker, 
scrambled out of the brush heap. 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo-00-00/” he called derid- 
ingly. 

Anne and Patsy started and looked back. 

“There he is!” groaned Patsy. 

Yes, there he was, standing in the middle of 
the road, waving his hand tauntingly. 

“Shall we chase him again?” asked Anne. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


19 

“Yes,” said Patsy; and then: “No, it's no use. 
He’s too far away; before we could get halfway 
up the hill, he’d be out of sight again.” 

“Oh, well!” laughed Anne. “We don’t care,, 
Patsy-pet. Let’s go to Happy Acres and see 
what flowers are in bloom.” 

They went back to Larkland mill that had been 
a mill ever since The Village had been a village; 
crossed a foot bridge over Tinkling Water; and 
followed the path to the woodland nook they 
called Happy Acres. Long ago a house had been 
there, and persistent garden bulbs and shrubs 
gave beauty and fragrance to the place. One 
spring, Anne had adopted it and christened it 
Happy Acres, and she and her friends had made 
it a little woodland park that was a joy to all the 
neighborhood. It was fragrant now with a 
blossoming plum-tree and gay with the pink and 
scarlet of flowering almond and japonica. 

Anne and Patsy plucked a few sprays to carry 
home the beauty of it, and started down the path 
for a little visit to their cousin, Giles Spotswood, 
the miller. 

Patsy, who was in front, stopped suddenly. 
“What’s that?” she whispered. 

“It sounds like men quarreling,” Anne whis¬ 
pered back. “Who on earth—” 

“Look there!” 


20 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Anne crept to Patsy’s side and peeped through 
the bushes. There were two men on the road¬ 
side. One was their cousin, Black Mayo Os¬ 
borne. 

“Who’s that man?” asked Anne. 

“Mr. Smith; the new man at the Tolliver 
place.” 

“Ugh! he’s horrid! snarling like a spiteful cur 
dog!” exclaimed Anne. 

The stranger was indeed odd and unpleasant- 
looking. He had long loose-jointed limbs and 
such a short body that it seemed as if its only 
function was to hold his head and limbs together. 
The two sides of his blond face were quite unlike. 
The left side was handsome with its straight 
brow and wide blue eye; but the right eye, half 
hidden by its drooping lid., slanted outward and 
down, the tip of the nose turned toward the bulg¬ 
ing right nostril, and the mouth drooped at the 
right corner and ended in a heavy downward 
line. 

“Easy! go easy, my German friend!” Black 
Mayo’s voice rang out clear and mocking. 

“I am not a German; that am I not!” screamed 
Smith. “I am an American citizen. I can my 
papers show. I am more American than you. 
What are your peoples here ? Ach! what do they ? 
This morning they did the last cent out of their 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


21 


treasury take, the expenses of old traitors and 
rebels to pay—” 

The sentence was not finished. A quick blow 
from the shoulder stretched him on the ground. 

“Hey! lie there a minute!” cried Black Mayo, 
with an impish light twinkling in his dark eyes. 
“Listen! Here’s a tune you’ve got to respect in 
this part of the world.” He whistled “Dixie” 
with vim and vigor, over and over again. Then 
he stepped aside and held out his hand, saying: 
“Ah, well! You didn’t know any better. Forget 
it!” 

The man glared up at him, without a word. 

“Oh! if that’s the way you feel about it—” 
Mr. Osborne laughed, shrugged his shoulders, 
and, still whistling “Dixie,” took the road that 
led to his home at Larkland. 

Mr. Smith scrambled to his feet and looked 
after Black Mayo, from under down-drawn 
brows, with his thin wide lips writhing like ser¬ 
pents; then he went limping up the road. 

The girls turned white amazed faces to each 
other. 

“Ugh!” said Patsy. “Let’s go home. Do—do 
you reckon he’ll hurt Cousin Mayo?” 

“Of course not. He can’t. How can he?” 
said Anne. After a pause she added: “He cer¬ 
tainly will if he can.” 


CHAPTER II 


E XULTING at the way he had diddled 
the girls, Dick pranced along the Red- 
ville road. He did not meet any one, for 
it was a fair spring day and the country people 
were busy; but he saw men and boys he knew, 
plowing and grubbing, hallooing to their teams 
and to one another. 

About two miles from The Village, Dick 
turned off on the Old Plank Road. Twenty years 
before, this had been a highway going through 
The Village, on its long way to Richmond. Then 
the railroad was built. It wanted to come through 
The Village, between court-house and church, 
but the people rose up in arms. They did not 
want shrieking, grinding trains, to scare horses 
and bring in outsiders, nor an iron track parting 
their homes from their graves in the churchyard. 
So the railroad went by Redville that was six 
miles from The Village in summer and three or 
four times as far in the winter season of ruts 
and red mud. 

After the railway was built, however, the road 
by Redville station became the thoroughfare; 


22 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


23 

the Old Plank Road was seldom traveled except 
by negroes who lived in clearings in the Big 
Woods that covered miles of the rocky, infertile 
ridge land. 

Dick was near one of these clearings, a patch 
of stumpy land around a log cabin, when he heard 
a voice calling loudly, “Whoa! Gee! Whoa, I 
say!” 

An old negro was coming up the hill, in a cart 
drawn by bony, long-horned oxen. 

“Hey, Unc’ Isham!” said Dick. “What are 
you making such a racket for?” 

Isham Baskerfield jumped nervously; but when 
he recognized the speaker, he grinned and said: 
“Howdy, little marster! howdy! I was jest 
talkin’ to my oxes. I tuk ’em down to de creek 
to gin ’em some water.” 

“You sounded scared,” commented Dick. 
“And you looked scared, too.” 

“Skeered? Course I aint skeered. Huccome 
I be skeered?” Isham replied loudly. Then he 
mumbled: “I aint nuver liked to go down dis 
road since dat old man—Whar you gwine, Marse 
Dick?” he interrupted himself. “Don’t you fool 
’round dat lowermos’ cabin. Dat’s”—he 
breathed the name in a whisper—“Solomon 
Gabe’s house, dat is. An’ he can shore cunjer 
folks.” 


24 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Dick laughed. “So that's what you are afraid 
of. You—" 

“Sh—sh, little marster!" The old negro looked 
around, as if afraid of being overheard. He 
stopped his ox cart in front of his cabin. “I got 
to git my meal bag," he said. “Lily Belle emptied 
it to make a hoecake for dinner, so I got to 
go to mill an’ git some corn ground ’fore supper 
time. I don’t worry ’bout nothin’ long as my 
meal bag can stan’ up for itself, but when it lays 
down I got to stir about. What you doin’, 
Marse Dick, strayin’ so fur from home?’’ 

“Oh! I’m just strolling ’round,’’ Dick an¬ 
swered vaguely. 

“Umph! When I fust see you, I thought you 
mought be gwine fishin’; but you aint got no 
fishin’ pole." 

“No use to carry a pole in the woods, when 
you’ve got a knife," said Dick. “Where is a good 
place to go?" 

“Uh! any o’ dem holes in Mine Creek below 
de ford," said the old man; “taint good fishin’ 
’bove thar." 

“O. K.!’’ said Dick. “If I catch more fish than 
I can carry, I’ll leave you what I can’t tote home." 

“Yas, suh; yas, suh! I reckon you will," 
chuckled the old negro. 

Dick went on down the road. But his merry 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


25 

whistle died on his lips as he passed Solomon 
Gabe’s cabin. 

It stood, like a dark, poisonous fungus, under 
low-branching evergreens in a dank, somber hol¬ 
low a little away from the road. The squat old 
log hovel had not even a window; the door stood 
open, not hospitably,, but like the yawning mouth 
of a pit. 

Dick ran on down the road and came pres¬ 
ently to Mine Creek, a little stream straggling 
along a rocky, weed-fringed bed. Near the ford, 
there was a pile of rotting logs and fallen stones 
that had once been a cabin. He left the road 
here, but he did not take Isham’s advice and go 
down Mine Creek. Instead, he went up stream, 
following a vague old path that presently crossed 
the creek and climbed a little hill. There was a 
small enclosure fenced in with rotting rails. In 
and around the enclosure were piles of earth 
and broken stones of such ancient date that sap¬ 
lings and even trees were growing on them. 

Dick paused on the hilltop and looked around 
cautiously. No one was in sight; and all was still 
except for the chatter of squirrels and the drum¬ 
ming of woodpeckers. He jumped over the old 
fence and advanced to the edge of a well-like 
opening. Again he stopped and looked around. 
Then he took out of his pocket a ball of string. 


26 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

He tied a stone to one end of it; dropped the stone 
into the hole; played out his line until it rested 
on the bottom; and tied a knot in the string at the 
ground level. 

Then he went into the woods and cut down a 
hickory sapling; he measured it with his line and 
cut it off at the top; and trimmed the branches, 
leaving stout prongs at intervals of about 
eighteen inches. Every now and then, he stopped 
and looked about, to make sure that he was not 
observed. After nearly an hour’s work, he 
finished an improvised ladder which he carried 
to the hole and slid over the edge. Then with a 
final sharp lookout, he descended. 

He found himself in a pit about ten feet in di¬ 
ameter, heaped knee-deep with twigs and leaves 
swept there by winds of many winters. At one 
side there was an opening four feet wide and 
five or six feet high, the mouth of a tunnel that 
was roofed with logs supported on the sides by 
stout rough timbers. 

Dick lighted his candle and started down this 
tunnel. But after a few steps he turned back, set 
down his candle, and pulled his ladder into the 
hole. 

“Now,” he said. “Anybody’s welcome to 
look in here. I reckon they’ll not find little 
Dick.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


27 

He picked up his candle and went along the 
tunnel. Now and then it dropped down abruptly, 
but there w r ere timbers and old ladders that made 
the way passable. At last the tunnel broadened 
into a room about thirty feet square and high 
enough to stand upright in. This room also was 
roofed with logs and poles propped by stout tim¬ 
bers of white oak. Here and there were heaps of 
earth and stones and piles of rotting timbers; 
on the left side there was another tunnel. 

Dick hesitated a minute, then he muttered: 
“I reckon I’ll find it here. But I’ll look around 
first.” 

He followed the lower tunnel. It, too, slanted 
downward, but it was longer than the upper one 
and had several short spurs. It ended in a pit a 
dozen feet deep, that had an old ladder in it. 
Dick climbed down and looked around, then he 
went back to the main room and began examin¬ 
ing the clay and stone between the supporting 
timbers. 

“It certainly seems as if they would have left 
some,” he said earnestly to himself. “I ought to 
see little bits sparkling somewhere. If they were 
ever so little, they would show me where to 
work.” 

His tour of investigation brought him at last 
to a corner where there was a heap of earth and 


28 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


stones. He scrambled on top of the mound,— 
and, in a twinkling, he landed at the bottom of a 
hole. 

For a minute he was stunned. Then he 
staggered to his feet,, lighted the candle which 
had been extinguished in his fall, and looked 
around. He had fallen into a pit ten or twelve 
feet deep—probably an opening of the mine that 
had been abandoned with the failure of a vein 
that was being followed. The place had been 
covered with a layer of logs and poles on top of 
which earth and stones had been thrown. The 
rotting timbers—how many years they had been 
there!—had given way under his weight. 

How was he to get out? The walls of the pit, 
stone in one place and clay on the other sides,, 
were steep, almost perpendicular. 

After considering awhile, he set his candle on 
a projecting rock, took out his knife, and dug 
some crannies for finger-holds and toe-holds, to 
serve as a ladder. But when he put his weight 
in them and tried to climb up, the clay 
slipped under his feet and he slid back. He made 
the holes larger and deeper, but after he mounted 
two or three steps he slid back again; and again; 
and again. At last he gave up this plan. Any¬ 
way,, if he could climb to the top, how could he 
get out? He had crashed through the middle of 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


29 

the pit, and the broken downward-slanting poles 
barred the sides. 

Must he stay here and wait for help to come? 
Help? What help? No one knew where he was. 
Oh! how he regretted now his careful plans to 
put everyone off the trail. Anne and Patsy could 
only say that they had last seen him on the main 
road to Redville. And Isham thought he had 
gone down Mine Creek. 

If only he had left the ladder in place, there 
would be a chance that when they missed him 
and made search, they would look in the mine. 
But he had taken that chance away from himself 
by pulling the ladder into the pit. 

He must dig his way out. He must! There 
was no other way of escape. He selected a place 
that seemed free from rocks, and began to hack 
at the wall. He toiled till his arms ached and 
his hands were sore and blistered. It was a slow 
and painful task, »but he was making progress. 
He piled up loose rocks and stood on tiptoe, so 
as to reach higher on the wall. In spite of his 
weariness and his tormented hands, his spirits 
rose. 

“A tight place like this is lots of fun—after 
you get out. Won’t Dave and Steve pop their 
eyes when I tell ’em about it?” 

He laughed and, with renewed vigor, drove his 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


3o 

knife into the hard clay. There was a sharp 
scraitch and a snap. Something fell, click! on a 
stone. It was his knife blade, broken against a 
rock that extended shelf-like above him, and 
formed an impassable barrier. All these hours of 
work and pain were wasted. He must begin 
again and dig out in another place; or try to, 
and perhaps run against rock again. And with 
this broken knife! 

He groaned and looked around. 

“O-oh!” he gave a sharp, startled cry. His 
candle! Only an inch of it was left. Oh! he 
must get out! How terrible it would be here in 
the pitch-black, shut-in dark! 

He seized a broken bit of timber for a make¬ 
shift spade,, and gave a hurried stroke. Alas! 
The old timber snapped in two, bruising and cut¬ 
ting his hands cruelly. He threw aside the use¬ 
less fragment and then, as if he had lost the 
power of motion, he stood staring at his bit 
of candle that shortened with every passing 
second. 

He pulled himself together. He must view 
every foot, every inch of the pit, so that he could 
work to purpose in the dark, not just dig, dig, 
dig, and get nowhere. He scrutinized the wall, 
noting every angle and projection; then he looked 
up, and studied the position of every log, every 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


3i 

broken pole. For the first time, he observed a 
log that did not extend across the pit; its end was 
about two feet from the wall. Ah! perhaps, per¬ 
haps— 

He jerked the string out of his pocket, made a 
slip noose, and threw it at the end of the log; the 
noose fell short. He threw it again; and again it 
went aside. The next time, it caught a broken 
pole, and to get it off he had to poke and push 
with a piece of timber for two or three minutes— 
minutes that seemed hours as he glanced fear¬ 
fully at the flickering candle. He threw the noose 
again; and at last it went over the log. He tried 
to pull it along. He wanted to get it near the 
middle, free of the broken poles, and pull himself 
up by it, if—oh! how he prayed it was!—stout 
enough to bear his weight; but now it was fast on 
a knot and he could not move it. 

He glanced at the candle. It was a mere bit 
of wick in a gob of grease; every flicker threat¬ 
ened to be its last. He could not wait any longer! 
he must do something! something! He would 
pull himself up to the end of the log and try to 
break through the poles. 

As he pulled, the log began to move. Ah! If 
he could pull the end into the pit, it would be 
a bridge to climb out on. He jerked with 
all his might, and it moved, slid, slipped down- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


32 

ward; the end caught against a projecting 
rock about four feet from the top; there it held 
fast. 

The candle flame flared and dropped and—no, 
it was not out; not yet. 

Dick jumped up and caught hold of the log. 
The movement fanned the failing light; it spurted 
and went out. No matter now! He had firm 
hold of the log. He scrambled up on it and man¬ 
aged presently to push and pull himself between 
the broken poles. At last, at last, thank Heaven! 
he was out of that awful pit. 

He staggered along, feeling his way by the 
wall, making one ascent after another, until a 
light glimmered before him and he reached the 
entrance well. He raised his ladder and climbed 
out. Then his strength gave way. He dropped 
down on a pile of leaves at the mine entrance, 
and lay there, gazing blankly at the blue 
sky shining beyond the fretwork of budding 
branches. 

Suddenly he began to laugh. He sat up and 
slapped his knees. ‘Til pass it on to them,” he 
said. ‘Til cover up that hole, and I’ll take Dave 
and Steve there—after I find it —and let them 
tumble in without a light. Then I’ll go off and 
pretend I don’t hear them,, and—oh! I’ll let them 
stay there long enough for them to think, to 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


33 

feel—” His face was suddenly solemn. “I might 
have stayed there and died. Died!” 

He got up and dragged the ladder out, and hid 
it under the leaves piled against the fence. 

“I reckon I ought not to expect to find it right 
away,” he sighed. “I’ve got to keep on looking 
and looking and looking. And I say I will! But 
I need some real tools. A knife, specially a 
broken one, isn’t much force for mining.” 

He went toward home, but he was in no hurry 
to complete the journey at the end of which were 
his unfinished task and his father. Instead of 
going down The Street, he took The Back Way 
behind the Court-house,, and slipped around the 
corner of the blacksmith shop. 

Mr. Mallett, the blacksmith, with only his corn¬ 
cob pipe for company, was sitting in a chair tilted 
against the door jamb of the grimy log cabin. He 
was a vivacious little man with blue eyes and 
dark hair, and a face that would have been sallow 
if it had been visible under the grime. All the 
Village boys liked to loaf at his shop, but Dick 
had now a special reason for visiting him. 

“Mr. Mallett—” Dick began. 

The smith started. “You young imp!” he ex¬ 
claimed. “What do you mean by jumping at me, 
sudden as a jack-in-the-box? I wasn’t thinking 
’bout you—and here you are, close enough to 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


34 

hear my very thoughts. I never see such a boy. 
Why, what’s the matter with your face?” 

“I fell down. It got scratched,” Dick ex¬ 
plained briefly. “Mr. Mallett, I was thinking 
about the Old Sterling Mine, near your great¬ 
grandfather’s shop. Do you reckon it was silver, 
real silver, he got there?” 

“Do I reckon? No,, I don’t! I know it, sure 
and certain as I’m setting here in this chair, 
smoking my corncob pipe. Aint I heard my 
father tell time and again what his granddad 
told him? Why, my father could remember him 
good. He was a little quick man with blue eyes 
and black hair—we all get our favor from him. 
He never did learn to talk like folks over here; 
he always mixed his words and gave ’em curious- 
sounding twists. He come from France, one of 
Lafayette’s soldiers he was.” 

“Why didn’t he go back with Lafayette?” 
asked Dick. “I should think he’d have been lone¬ 
some here, away from his own home and folks.” 

“Certainly he was lonesome,” said Mr. Mal¬ 
lett. “My father said, when he was old and child¬ 
like, he’d set in the corner, jabbering French by 
the hour, with tears dripping down his face.” 

“I don’t see why he stayed here,” persisted 
Dick. 

“He just stayed and kept staying,” said the 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 35 

smith. “Maybe that old silver mine had some¬ 
thing to do with it. He was always expecting to 
get out a fortune. He come with the Frenchers 
to chase Cornwallis, and they stopped here, two 
or three days, to mend shoes and get victuals. 

“The old Mr. Osborne that owned Larkland 
in them days see what a good blacksmith my 
great-grandad was, and told him when the war 
was over to come back here and he should have a 
home. So he did, and the squire helped him get 
some of the old glebe land, and he married Mr. 
Osborne’s overseer’s daughter. He had a smithy 
on the Old Plank Road by Mine Creek. I reckon 
you know the place.” 

Dick nodded. He did not say he had been 
there that very afternoon. 

“And he found silver on that hill. My grand- 
daddy used to tell us children about seeing his 
father getting silver out of the ground and beat¬ 
ing it on his anvil with his sledge hammer. And 
Black Mayo that’s always finding out something 
’bout everything, he found them old ree cord 
papers.” 

“And they proved about the silver mine?” 
asked Dick. 

“Certainly they did,” asserted Mr. Mallett. 
“Would folks try a man in law court for making 
money out of silver he didn’t have? Great-grand- 


36 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

dad didn’t deny making of it. He just said he 
wasn’t making no false coins. He was hammer¬ 
ing out sterling pure silver. That’s why they call 
it the Sterling Mine. And he was making pieces 
like Spanish six shilling pieces—our folks counted 
money by shillings in them days—and was giving 
them, in place of what they called alloy; he was 
giving better and purer money than the law. And 
what could folks say to that? Why, nothing; for 
it was the truth.” 

“And so they didn’t punish him?” asked Dick. 

“Punish him? What for? For doing better 
than the law of the land? No,, sirree!” 

“I don’t reckon he got out all the silver,” said 
Dick, more to himself than to Mr. Mallett. 

“Course not! Some was got out in my father’s 
day, by the Mr. Mayo that owned the land before 
The War.” 

“How did they get it out?” asked Dick. 

“Dug it out with tools, of course. Aint there 
the old picks and sledges and things, setting there 
in that shed,, that my father made for them? 
And Mr. Mayo—” 

“Are they—” 

Dick tried to interrupt, but Mr. Mallett went 
on with what he had to say: “He aint made 
much out of it. They say it was what they call 
Tree silver’, and great-granddad chanced to 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


37 

strike where it was rich. It petered out, and 
silver was so scarce and the rock so hard it didn’t 
pay to work the mine. Some folks say that. 
There was a tale that the manager wasn’t trying 
to make it pay; he wanted to get the mine for 
himself. He tried to buy it. But he didn’t. He 
died. Anyway, The War came, and ’t wasn’t 
worked any more.” 

“Yes.” Dick accepted the fact that The War 
ended everything, even the worth of the silver 
mine. “It does seem,, if it was real silver, we 
could see it there now,” he said thoughtfully. 

“Shucks!” Mr. Mallett got up and knocked 
the ashes out of his pipe. “Course they took out 
all in sight. Folks would have to dig for any 
more they got.” 

“And the tools; will you—” Dick checked 
himself. If he asked for the tools now, Mr. Mal¬ 
lett would guess what he was planning to do and 
somehow all The Village would know before sun¬ 
set. He must wait and manage to get them, with¬ 
out betraying his purpose. 

Mr. Mallett was looking at the westering sun. 
“Fayett ought to be home,” he said. “He went 
to Redville, and he was to be back in time to help 
me with a little work.” 

“Fayett!” exclaimed Dick. “Why, I didn’t 
know he came home for Easter.” 


38 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Yes,” said Mr. Mallett. “He’s mighty stirred 
up ’bout this war. What have we got to do with 
Europe’s war that started with the killing of a 
little prince in a country I’d never heard tell of? 
But Fayett’s got a notion in his head— Here! 
I’ve got to fix some rivets. Don’t you want to 
blow the bellows?” 

“I wish I had time,” said Dick. “I’ve got to go 
home. I—I haven’t finished my garden work.” 

“Then I reckon you’ll save it for another day,” 
said the smith. “Sun’s ’most down.” 

Its long rays lay like a red-gold band across 
The Street, as Dick started home, wishing—too 
late!—that he had finished his garden task and 
postponed his adventuring to another day. See¬ 
ing his father on the porch, the truant slipped be¬ 
hind the boxwood at the edge of the walk. But 
Mr. Osborne called, “Dick!” and then more 
sternly, “Richard!” 

It was useless to pretend not to hear. 

“Sir!” Dick answered meekly. 

“Have you completed your garden work?” 

“Not—not quite, sir,” said Dick. “I am just 
going to it now, sir. I can get a lot done before 
dark. And I’ll get up soon Monday morning, 
and finish it, sir, indeed I will.” 

“My son,—” Mr. Osborne spoke in a magis¬ 
terial voice and took Dick by the arm. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


39 

Just then the front gate clicked, and Black 
Mayo came up the walk. 

“‘War has been declared,,” he said without a 
word of greeting. “War! The United States 
has declared war with Germany.” 

Red Mayo dropped Dick’s arm. “How’d you 
hear?” 

“I met Fayett Mallett coming from, Redville. 
He’d heard the news, if we can call it news. We 
knew it was coming.” 

“Of course; it was inevitable. We knew that 
the minute we read the President’s War Message. 
He held off as long as he could.” 

“Yes. Now the War Resolution has passed 
Congress and the President has signed it.” 

Dick stood listening a minute, then slipped in¬ 
doors just as his mother came out. 

“What are you talking about?” she asked. 
“What is the matter?” 

“War!” said her husband. “The United States 
is in the War, Miranda.” 

Sweet William was at his mother’s elbow. He 
spoke in a puzzled little voice. “I thought The 
War was done. I thought the Confedacy was 
overrun.” 

“This is another war, son,” laughed Mr. Os¬ 
borne. “This is war with Germany.” 


CHAPTER III 


J UST then Emma came to the door. Emma 
was the Osbornes’ old servant, brown and 
plump as one of her own baked apple dump¬ 
lings, and as much a part of the family as the 
tall clock in “the chamber.” 

“Supper is ready, Miss M’randa, an’ you-all 
come right away, please’m,” she said. “De muf¬ 
fins is light as a feather. Come on an’ butter 
’em. If you-all will live on corn bread, please’m 
eat it hot.” 

“Poor Emma!” laughed Mrs. Osborne. “She 
cannot reconcile herself to our food program.” 

“I tell Emma ’bout the Belgians,” complained 
Sweet William. “But she says ‘them folks is too 
far off for her to bother ’bout; corn bread don’t 
set good on her stomach; and she’s going to eat 
what she likes, long as she can get it.’ And, 
mother, she has light bread and hot biscuits for 
herself every day, and—” 

“Sh-sh, son boy!” said Mrs. Osborne. “Emma 
doesn’t know any better, and we do. Come,, 
Mayo, and Mayo. Come to the hot corn muf¬ 
fins!” 


40 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


4i 

“1 ought to go home,” said Black Mayo. 
'Tolly’ll be expecting me.” 

"Indeed she will not,” said Mrs. Osborne. 
"Polly never expects you till she sees you coming 
in the gate. How is she, and how are your 
pigeons? I understand they are a part of your 
family now. Of course you’ll stay to supper, 
Mayo. Patsy, tell Emma to put another plate on 
the table.” 

A visit from their Cousin Mayo, always a de¬ 
light, was now especially welcome to Dick because 
it postponed, perhaps prevented, a disagreeable 
interview with his father. He slipped to his place 
and quietly devoted himself to the hot muffins, 
cold ham, and damson preserves. 

"Why, Dick! What have you done to your 
face?” asked his mother. 

"Nothing. It got scratched,” he mumbled, 
glancing at his father. 

But Mr. Osborne was not thinking of the 
garden; he was about to present to his family an 
amazing piece of news. He prepared for it by 
an impressive "Ahem!” with his eyes fixed on 
Black Mayo. 

"A client came to my office to-day,” he said 
solemnly. 

"Really, Mayo!” exclaimed his wife. 

"What is a client?” asked Sweet William. 


42 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Who disturbed the hoary dust of your 
sanctum ?” asked Black Mayo. 

“Well may you inquire!” said the Village 
lawyer. “You are responsible for his coming.” 

“I?” There was a look of blank astonishment, 
followed by a peal of laughter. “You don’t mean 
to say that scoundrel Smith—” 

“Yes. He wants to take action against you for 
assault and battery.” 

“What is a client?” Sweet William asked 
again. 

“What in the world are you talking about?” in¬ 
quired Mrs. Osborne. 

“Oh, I reckon I know.” Patsy eagerly aired 
her knowledge. “That Smith, the new man at 
the Tolliver place, quarreled with Cousin Mayo, 
and Cousin Mayo knocked him down. We saw it, 
Anne and I.” 

“Oh, Princess Pocahontas! Are you and Lady 
Anne taking the witness stand against me?” 
Black Mayo said in mock reproach. “Well, it’s 
true.” 

Mrs. Osborne gave a little exclamation of 
horror. “Oh, Mayo!” she said, frowning at her 
husband. “I’ve begged you not to let outside 
people buy land around here. And now Mayo’s 
had to knock one of them down.” 

“But, Miranda dear, when a man sells his farm 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


43 

and the purchaser comes to get me to look up 
the title—” 

“You just ought to tell him we don’t want him 
here,” said Mrs. Osborne. “What is the use of 
being a lawyer if you can’t put some law on out¬ 
siders to keep them from spoiling The Village?” 

The two men laughed. 

Then Black Mayo said: “I suppose he told you 
about it, Mayo. The T saids’ and ‘he saids’?” 

“Yes; oh, yes!” 

“H’m! I hope you’ll make him pay you a good 
fat fee for the case.” 

“Fee!” Red Mayo stared in amazement. “As¬ 
suredly you don’t think I’d accept his dirty 
money! Case! I informed him he had none.” 

“But I did knock him down.” 

“Of course you did. When he repeated what 
he said, I’d have knocked him down myself, if 
he hadn’t been in my own office. I told him if The 
Village heard such talk, he’d be tarred and 
feathered and drummed out of the community. 
Then I ordered him out of my office.” 

“And that is how you treat your rara avis, a 
client!” said Black Mayo. 

“What is a client?” repeated Sweet William, 
whose questions were always answered because 
he never stopped asking till they were. 

“A client, young man, is the golden-egg goose 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


44 

that a lawyer tries to lure into his coop,” Black 
Mayo explained. “One fluttered to your father 
and he shooed it away.” 

“I wish I had a goose that laid gold eggs,” said 
Sweet William. “I wouldn’t kill it, like the silly 
man in that story.” 

“Perhaps I can find one and trade it to you for 
Hop-o-hop,” suggested his cousin. 

Sweet William considered and shook his head. 
“Hop-o-hop couldn’t get on without me,” he said 
gravely. 

“Ah, it’s a family failing,” laughed Black 
Mayo, as they left the table. “None of you is 
willing to pay the price for the goose.” 

The evening was so mild that they settled 
themselves again on the porch. The men re¬ 
sumed their discussion of the war; David pored 
over a bulletin about corn; Dick snuggled down 
in a corner with “The Days of Bruce”; Anne and 
Patsy brought out their Red Cross knitting, and 
whispered and giggled together. Sweet William 
put a stool beside his mother’s chair and cuddled 
against her knee, with Scalawag at his feet. 

Mrs. Osborne left the discussion of public af¬ 
fairs to the menfolks. She was intent on her own 
task, the making out of a program for the Village 
Literary Society. What pleasant meetings they 
would have, reading about the Plantagenet kings, 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 45 

supplementing Hume’s history with Waverley 
novels and Shakespeare plays. She smiled and 
folded her paper. 

As the twilight deepened, Dick shut his book 
and grinned at the girls. 

'‘Too bad not to have your company on my 
walk to-day,, after you promised it, too!” 

"Oh! we thought of a nicer place to go, where 
we wouldn’t scratch our faces,” said Anne. 

"We’ll go with you some day, after you tear 
down all the barbed wire and briers,,” said Patsy. 

"I dare you!” Dick defied them. 

"You say that because you know I’m going 
away so soon,” said Anne. 

"You’re coming back in June. I dare and 
double dare you for then,” replied Dick. "I’ll be 
going to this place—oh! right along.” 

"All right,” said Anne. "We’ll follow you; 
see if we don’t. We’ll not take a dare; will we, 
Patsy-pet ?” 

Their bickering was interrupted by the ap¬ 
proach of guests. Three men strolled across the 
yard—Giles Spotswood, the cousin from the 
mill; Will Blair, another cousin, who kept the 
Village post office; and old Mr. Tavis, a villager 
outside the cousinship. 

"We saw Black Mayo here, and we dropped in 
to talk over the news,” said Mr. Blair. "Giles 


46 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

says Fayett Mallett heard at Redville that the 
United States has declared war. That’s what 
comes of sinking American ships; eh, Mayo?” 

“Yes,” answered Black Mayo; “the German 
sinking of American ships was the overt act 
which brought on this war, just as the Stamp 
Tax brought on the Revolution. But at bottom, 
in both cases, the real cause is the same: it’s a 
fight against a despotic government for liberty 
and human rights.” 

“It’s strange the Germans kept up submarine 
fighting after the United States’ protests,” said 
Mr. Blair; “getting another powerful enemy.” 

“I reckon they count on winning the war with 
U-boats before the United States gets over there 
with both feet,” answered Black Mayo. “But 
I’ll bet on the British Navy; it’s saved the Allies 
so far.” 

“You said the Belgians saved them by that 
ten days of defense that gave the French and 
British time to come,” said David. 

“You told me the French saved them by driv¬ 
ing the Germans back at the battle of the Marne.,” 
said Dick. 

“Oh! but you said the stubborn retreat of that 
first little British army was a real victory that 
made possible the Marne victory,” Patsy re¬ 
minded him. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 47 

“Well, well! a good deal of saving is necessary; 
and maybe the old United States will jump in and 
do the final saving. ,, 

“The French and British are pushing forward 
now,” said Mr. Blair. “Yesterday’s paper 
says-” 

The men discussed the war news in an in¬ 
terested but remote way, just as they had dis¬ 
cussed plagues in India, famines in China, the 
Boer War. Their sympathies were as wide as 
humanity; but, after all, these things did not 
touch them, really and personally, as did the 
death of Joe Spencer’s little daughter or the 
burning of a negro cabin with a baby in it. No 
one said “we” about the war; it was always 
“they.” 

“What do you reckon they will do?” asked Mr. 
Spotswood. “Will they send an army over, do 
you think?” 

“Oh, no!” Red Mayo answered confidently. 
“The war will be over before they could send men 
abroad, even if they had a trained army ready to 
start. They’ll lend the Allies money; they’ll 
give some—large amounts, millions, no doubt. 
And they’ll supply food and munitions; they must 
hustle around and get ships.” 

“The main job will be to get the food to send,” 
said Mr. Spotswood. “There’s an alarming 



48 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

shortage of grain. I never saw it so scarce and 
high, since Tve been milling. The first war work 
is the farmers’, to raise a bumper crop.” 

“Then I’m in war work, father,” said David. 
“I’m going to beat the record on my corn acre 
this year.” 

Dick laughed. “A poor war worker! Not 
even a one-horse farmer, just a one-acre boy!” 

“My one-acre boy multiplied by hundreds of 
thousands makes the Boys’ Corn Club a big 
thing,” said Mr. Spotswood. “Why aren’t you 
in it, Dick?” 

“I’ve got something better to do,” said Dick, 
confidently and mysteriously. 

“Isn’t it strange the Germans don’t see they 
are beaten?” said Mr. Blair. 

“Man, man! What are you talking about?” 
Black Mayo exclaimed. “Beaten? In three 
years of war, German soil has been trampled by 
enemy feet only once, those few days in that first 
August when the French invaded Alsace. I fear 
there’s a hard struggle and dark days ahead.” 

This speech amazed every one. 

“Why, Cousin Mayo! Can’t the United States 
whip the world?” exclaimed David. 

“Aren’t most of the nations against Ger¬ 
many?” asked Dick. 

“Oh, yes! A score of nations are united 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


49 

against Germany and her sister autocracies, Aus¬ 
tria-Hungary and Turkey and Bulgaria.” 

“Is Germany so much the best fighter?” David 
wanted to know. 

“No! But she has the inside lines, and she was 
ready for war. For nearly forty years she was 
preparing for ‘the day,’ while the rest of the 
world was busy with works of peace.” 

“Didn’t the other countries have armies and 
navies,, too?” David persisted. 

“No country ever built up such a perfect war 
machine as Germany,” said Mr. Osborne. “Every 
point was prepared. Optical and dye experts 
produced an inconspicuous gray-green uniform; 
engineers constructed the Kiel Canal and a net¬ 
work of railroads leading to Belgium and France; 
scientists captured nitrogen from the air for ex¬ 
plosives and fertilizers, and devised Zeppelins, 
huge guns, submarines, and poison gas; experts 
made war plans; officers were drilled to carry 
them out with soldiers trained by years of serv¬ 
ice. And the minds of people were prepared— 
abroad by propaganda, and at home by patriotic- 
sounding talk about ‘the seas must be free’ and 
‘we demand our place in the sun.’ Even Kuno 

-” He paused and then said to himself, “I 

wonder where Kuno is!” 

“Kuno?” said Red Mayo, questioningly. 



5o 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


"Kuno Kleist, a German friend of mine with 
whom I tramped through Mexico. He was 
coming home with me, but he had news that his 
mother was ill, so he went back to Germany. 
Such a clever, merry, kind-hearted fellow he was; 
confident that the eternal jubilee of peace and 
brotherhood was at hand, 'made in Germany/ by 
his Socialist brethren.” 

Mr. Blair laughed. "Now we are seeing what 
is really 'made in Germany’ by your friend Kuno 
Kleist and the others.” 

Black Mayo shook his head. "Not Kuno, not 
the will and heart of him. They may have his 
body—I hope not, I hope not—as a cog in this ter¬ 
rible military machine, crushing helpless nations 
and people with its awful policy of frightfulness.” 

"They ought all to be killed, them German 
scoundrels ought,” wheezed old Mr. Tavis. 
"They ought to be treated like they treat the 
Belgians and them other people Will Blair reads 
us about in his newspaper.” 

"No and no!” Black Mayo said emphatically; 
then he went on, looking not at Mr. Tavis, but 
at David and Dick: "The worst thing that could 
happen to the world, to us, would be to be in¬ 
fected by the germ of hate.” 

"But the Germans do such mean things, Cousin 
Mayo. How can we not hate them?” Patsy 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


51 

looked up with a frown. “Father read in the paper 
to-day that two more relief ships have been sunk, 
ships loaded with food for the starving Belgians.” 

“And I gave all my money to buy it,” said 
Sweet William, indignantly. “I’m saving my 
sugar for the poor little Belgians. Do you reckon 
the Germans’ll sink that, too?” 

“Relief ships!” said David. “Why, they sink 
hospital ships, with wounded soldiers and doctors 
and nurses; and ships with women and babies. 
Remember the Lusitania!” 

“I think we ought to hate them,” said Anne. 

“No, dear, no,,” said Black Mayo. “We ought 
to fight fair and hard and without hate, for our 
own rights and the rights of all people, the Ger¬ 
mans, too. Why, the German people had no voice 
in making this war. It was declared by the 
kaiser without consulting the Reichstag in which 
the people are represented. 

“Remember, children, most wars are made by 
governments, against the wishes and interests of 
the people. War is a disaster, a scourge; war, 
more than famine, is the seven blasted ears of 
corn, the seven lean-fleshed kine, destroying the 
full and the well-favored. All the waste and woe 
of this World War will be worth while if they 
make people realize the horror and wickedness 
of war and put an end to it forever.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


52 

“You are talking over their heads,” laughed 
Red Mayo. 

“I am not sure of that,” said Black Mayo, 
looking at David’s thoughtful face. “And if I 
am, it is not a bad thing for young folks to have 
things above them to grow up to.” 

“Dick, get a chair for Cousin Alice Blair,” 
said Mrs. Osborne, as a fat, smiling woman 
waddled up the path. “She likes the big rocker. 
Get two chairs, son. There’s Miss Fanny com¬ 
ing down The Street, and she’ll stop to find out 
what we are talking about.” 

Sure enough, Miss Fanny Morrison turned in 
at the gate. She was the Village seamstress, a 
blunt-featured, blunt-mannered, kind-hearted 
woman who lived with an invalid sister in a 
cottage across the street from the Osborne 
home. 

“I saw you-all out here and I just had to come 
in,” she said. “Oh! you’re talking about this 
war. Is it really true that the United States is 
in it? Isn’t it awful? War is a terrible thing. 
I certainly am glad I don’t live in a country that 
is in it, I mean, really in it. My mother said 

that during The War they used to-” She 

carried the conversation away from the war that 
was convulsing the world, to their “The War,” 
fought before they were born. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


53 

“Did the supervisors appropriate money for 
our veterans to go to the Reunion, Mayo?” Mrs. 
Osborne asked presently. 

“The treasury’s almost empty,” answered her 
husband. “They gave what they had. And 
we started a subscription to make up the 
deficit.” 

“We can raise part of the money by selling 
lunches on the Green during court week,” said 
Mrs. Osborne. 

Patsy spoke quickly. “Oh, no, mother! You 
forget I told you the school’s going to serve 
lunches that week for the Red Cross.” 

Mrs. Osborne turned a surprised, indignant 
face to her daughter. “Why, my dear! Aren’t 
you patriotic enough to give up any other plans 
for the sake of our dear old Confederate sol¬ 
diers?” jp 

Patsy hung her head, with a submissive 
mumble. 

Sweet William, now nestling against his 
mother’s knee, put a caressing hand on her cheek 
to demand attention. 

“Mother, is Virginia the United States, too?” 
he inquired. 

“Virginia the United States?” repeated his 
mother. 

“Virginians used to be accused of thinking so, 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


54 

son,” said Mr. Osborne, laughing. “It is the 
general opinion that our State is a part of the 
Union; it’s so on the map.” 

“Then if Virginia is in the United States, we 
are, too; aren’t we,, father?” 

“We certainly are, son; we are whatever Vir¬ 
ginia is,” declared Mr. Osborne. 

“Then we are in this war.” Sweet William 
imparted the information solemnly, as his own 
special discovery. “Virginia’s the United States, 
and we are Virginia; and so we are in the war!” 

“It sounds reasonable, son,” remarked his 
father, with a dry chuckle, “but you are the first 
of us who has thought of it.” 

While they were laughing over Sweet Wil¬ 
liam’s great discovery, two men, one leading a 
horse, turned from The Back Way into The 
Street and came toward the Osborne home. 

Black Mayo jumped up. 

“There’s Jack Mallett bringing Rosinante,” 
he said. “I left her at the shop to be shod, and 
told him I’d be bp ; ck in ten minutes.” 

“We all know the length of your ‘ten 
minutes,’ ” laughed Mrs. Osborne. 

“It’s your fault, Miranda, all your fault,” 
Black Mayo turned on her. “You asked me to 
stay to supper; and you know I never know when 
to go home.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 55 

By this time, Mr. Mallett and his son were 
at the steps, receiving a cordial greeting. They 
were a little circle of friends, gentlefolks and 
seamstress and blacksmith, who had grown up 
together in The Village. 

As children and men and women, in school and 
shop and church, they played and worked and 
worshipped together. Each stood on his own 
merits,, and only old negroes spoke slightingly 
of “poor white trash.” But the class lines were 
there, as deep or even deeper than when they 
were marked by wealth and land and slaves. An 
Osborne or Wilson or Mayo was—oh, well! an 
Osborne or Wilson or Mayo, and not a Tavis 
or Jones or Hight. 

“I’m awfully sorry, Jack-” began Black 

Mayo, going to get his horse. 

“Oh! that’s all right,” interrupted Mr. Mallett. 
“I was shutting up the shop and I saw you here, 
so I thought I’d bring the mare. She don’t like 
to stand tied.” 

“Thank you, Jack.” 

“Come in, Jack; come in, you and Fayett, and 
sit awhile,” said Red Mayo,, heartily. 

“No,, Red; no, Miss Miranda, thank you,” re¬ 
plied Mr. Mallett. “I can’t set down. I’ve got 
to go straight home. I promised my old woman I 
would.” But he tarried to share his news with 



56 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

them, “You’ve been talking ’bout the war, I 
reckon. Fayett heard to-day at Redville the Con¬ 
gress has voted for it. And—what do you think? 
—he’s going to give up agricultural school and 
be a soldier.” 

“Fayett a soldier!” exclaimed Dick, looking 
at his neighbor with amazement and a sort of 
awe. 

The elders, too, were exclaiming and question¬ 
ing, looking at the boy whom they had known 
all his life as if he had suddenly become a 
stranger. That a Village boy was going as a sol¬ 
dier did not bring home to them the fact that 
the World War had become an American war; 
it merely seemed to carry him away from them, 
making him a part of that mighty overseas con¬ 
flict. 

“Is Fayett really going?” asked Miss Fanny 
Morrison. 

“Well, he wants to, and my old woman and 
me’ve been talking it over and we’ve done both 
give our consent; so I reckon it’s settled,” was the 
answer. 

“How could his mother agree?” As Mrs. Os¬ 
borne asked the question, her hold tightened on 
the man child drowsing at her knee. 

“He told us he felt he ought to go, and she 
says she wouldn’t stand in the way of anything 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


57 

he thought he ought to do,” Mr. Mallett said 
quietly. “And if his mother can give him up, 
Eve got no right to hold him back.” 

“But, Fayett,—” Mr. Blair turned to the boy— 
“I don’t understand your wanting to go. You 
were always such a peaceable fellow.” 

“Yes, sir,” said the lad, as if that were a reason 
for him to fight in this war. “And now that the 
United States is in it, it seems like I must go. Of 
free will. Not waiting to be sent.” 

He spoke as an American, but those listening 
remembered that he was the great-great-grand¬ 
son of a Frenchman. 

Black Mayo turned to Mr. Mallett. “Well, 
well, well! Your great-grandfather came here 
to fight for American .liberty, and now your son 
is going to France to fight for freedom there. 
Wouldn’t that old Mallett of the mine be proud 
of Fayett? Ah, it’s fine to act so that our an¬ 
cestors might be proud of us! God bless you, 
boy!” 

He wrung Fayett’s hand, man to man, and 
then took his bridle rein. 

“Thank you, Jack,” he said again. “Good 
night, folks. It’s ten minutes to eight. Polly is 
locking the back door this minute, and when I get 
there she’ll be settled with her knitting. Come to 
see us, all of you.” 


58 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

He paused in the yard and said, “Mayo, a 
word with you. ,, Then he said in an undertone: 
“It’s best to keep quiet about what happened to¬ 
day. Tell Anne and Patsy so. That fellow 
Smith doesn’t understand how we feel about 
things. If his foolish speech gets abroad, it will 
injure him. Maybe I was a little too quick on the 
trigger.” 

He swung into the saddle and the roan mare 
galloped away. 

While the other guests were saying good night, 
Dick slipped to his bedroom, avoiding a private 
interview with his father. 

“He won’t punish me to-morrow,” he said. 
“It’s Sunday, Easter Sunday.” 

Easter Sunday! And America, that had 
striven so hard for peace, had been whirled into 
the red World War. 

But it was not of the nation that Mrs. Osborne 
was thinking as she put Sweet William to bed. 

“Poor Mrs. Mallett!” she said to herself. 
“What if it were my boy that is going?” And 
she kissed her little son so fiercely that he stirred 
and opened his eyes. 

“Mother,” he said drowsily, “will my sugar 
be enough-” 

He was asleep before the question was finished. 



CHAPTER IV 


D ICK was up early Monday morning, 
meekly and diligently hoeing the potato 
patch. But his father had seen this hu¬ 
mility and industry follow too many offenses to 
overlook Saturday’s disobedience; so the culprit 
received a severe lecture ending with the com¬ 
mand to spend his Saturday afternoons for a 
month working in the garden. 

A month! A whole month before he could 
go back to the Old Sterling Mine! All that he 
could do, in the meantime, to help carry out his 
plan of working the mine and making a fortune, 
was to get tools and collect candles. 

He rummaged among the old irons in the black¬ 
smith’s shed on several afternoons, under pre¬ 
tense of finding horseshoes. 

“What’s this old tool; and that one?” he asked 
with assumed carelessness, pulling out one after 
another,, until he identified and set aside some that 
the miners had used. 

Then he chose an occasion when Mr. Mallett 
was busy shoeing a fractious mule and said in 
an offhand way: “Mr. Mallett, I want to dig a 
59 


6 o 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


hole, where I reckon there’s rock. May I take 
some of the old tools out of your shed?” 

“Help yourself.” 

“And I needn’t bring them back right away ?” 

Mr. Mallett did not look up from his task. 
“Keep ’em long as you please. They’re there to 
sell for old iron. Whoa, you brute!” 

“Thank you!” Dick went away then, but at 
dusk that evening he slipped back to the shop and 
got the pick and spade and sledge hammer he had 
set aside, and sped down the unlighted street and 
deposited them under the churchyard hedge. 

Many an hour, during the days that followed, 
while he sat with a textbook in his hand, he 
was in fancy unearthing vast treasures and dis¬ 
playing them to the envy and admiration of his 
comrades. Slowly, oh! very slowly, the days 
went by that kept him chained to his tasks at 
home. 

One pleasant afternoon in mid-April, the chil¬ 
dren drifted out of school, in the usual merry 
chattering groups. The Village schoolhouse was 
across The Street from The Roost. It was a 
quaint, ivy-mantled brick cottage, the old “office,” 
in the corner of the yard at Broad Acres. Broad 
Acres, once a lordly estate, was now “broad 
acres” in name only. Farm after farm, field 
after field, had passed from the family ownership 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 61 

until the mansion, with the rambling yard and 
garden, was all that was left. 

The house was a stately red-brick building with 
wide halls and spacious, high-ceilinged rooms. 
Mrs. Wilson, who lived there with her daughter 
Ruth, spent her days teaching A B Cs to babies 
and preparing Dick and the older boys for the uni¬ 
versity. People who were able paid her in money 
or wood or meal or shoes, and she accepted their 
pupils and fees, but oh! how she struggled to get 
the children whose parents were too poor to pay 
for schooling or to realize its value. 

“I wish and I wish you weren’t going away, 
Anne, you precious darling Anne!” Patsy wailed 
for the twentieth time, giving Anne Lewis a 
frantic embrace. 

“It’s a horrid shame!” exclaimed Ruth 
Wilson. 

“But I’m coming back in the summer,” Anne 
said,, to comfort them and herself. “Oh! and, 
Patsy, won’t we have a lovely time, going around 
with Dick!” she said, with a mischievous glance 
at Patsy’s twin. 

“Bet you will—not!” declared Dick. 

“And think what a good time we’ll all have 
at Happy Acres.” 

“Let's go to Happy Acres now,” suggested 
David Spotswood. “We boys will catch some 


62 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

fish—maybe, and you girls can get flowers, and 
we’ll come home by the mill.” 

“Oh, yes! let’s do that,” exclaimed Anne. “You 
can go, can’t you, Patsy? Ruth? Alice?” 

“I don’t see how I can, to stay all afternoon,” 
Patsy said regretfully. “Our Red Cross box is 
to go off next week and Pm not half done my 
sweater.” 

“I’ve got to f-finish my scarf,” stammered Ruth. 

“I want to knit another pair of socks., if I have 
time,” said Alice. 

The Village was working and denying itself 
to help stricken France and Belgium. If the con¬ 
tributions were not large in dollars and cents, 
they were great in the efforts and self-sacrifice of 
the little country neighborhood. But the offer¬ 
ings came from the hands of good Samaritans, 
not of patriots. America had accepted the war; 
it had not yet come home to The Village. Later 
on, it was to—but we shall see what we see. 

“Oh, you girls!” grumbled Stephen Tavis. 
“You are doing that Red Cross stuff all the time.” 

“And you boys are playing while we work,” 
said Patsy, tossing her head. 

“We are saving flour and sugar for the Bel¬ 
gians. Do you want us to knit and sew ?” laughed 
Dick. 

“Some of the boys in Washington are knit- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 63 

ting,” Anne said gravely; “and lots of men, real 
men, like firemen and soldiers. And they—we— 
are all making gardens, so there will be more food 
to send to hungry France and Belgium.” 

“Father read from the paper last night some¬ 
thing the President said,” said Patsy. “ 'Every 
one who makes or works a garden helps to solve 
the problem of feeding the nations.’ ” 

“Yes, the President says the fate of the nation 
and the world rests largely on the farmer,” said 
David, importantly. “He wants them to plant 
food crops; and that’s what I am doing.” 

“Oh, your old corn acre! You’re so biggity 
about it,” jeered Dick. 

“I wouldn’t mind a little farm work or garden¬ 
ing; but I certainly draw the line at knitting,” 
said Steve. 

“Oh! oh! oh!” Anne jumped up and down, ut¬ 
tering little squeals of excitement. “Steve! David! 
Dick! Why don’t you have a school war garden?” 

“A school garden?” questioned Steve. 

“Yes; like we have in Washington, that all the 
pupils work in,” said Anne. 

“Thank you! I get enough gardening at 
home,” said Dick, sourly. “I don’t want to spend 
all my life hung to one end of a stick with a hoe 
at the other end.” 

“Oh! but this is fun, and good war work too. 


64 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

It takes just a few hours a week from each of us. 
The more there are to help, the less there is for 
each one to do.” Then Anne went on indig¬ 
nantly: “It seems to me you’d want to help, you 
boys, when you think about all those poor people 
over there, old folks and children and women 
with babies, homeless and without food. Hun¬ 
dreds and thousands of them stand in line for 
hours every day to get a little soup and a piece 
of bread; and if we in America don’t provide that 
bread and soup, they’ll starve.” 

“I’ll make a garden for them,” said a high, 
sweet voice, quavering on the verge of tears. 
“If I had a hoe and a place to work, I’d begin 
right away. I ain’t quite as big as Dick, but 
father says I’ve got mighty good muscle. Just 
you feel it, Anne,” said Sweet William. “Where’s 
a hoe? And where’s the garden going to be?” 

“Yes; where could we have a garden?” said 
Steve. “I don’t mind working a little, enough 
to keep up with Sweet William,, if we had a good 
place.” 

There was a pause. 

“There isn’t any place. You see we can’t have 
it,” Dick said triumphantly. 

“There is; you can,” Anne declared vehem¬ 
ently. “You may have my Happy Acres that 
Cousin Rodney gave me. I’ll—yes, I’ll be willing 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 65 

and glad to dig up the flowers for potatoes and 
things/’ Her voice broke and she winked back 
her tears. 

“O-oh!” 

“Why, Anne!” 

“Of course you wouldn’t!” 

“What’s this about digging up flowers?” Mrs. 
Wilson, coming out of the schoolroom, with her 
hands full of papers, heard Anne’s last words and 
the horrified exclamations they excited. “Surely 
you aren’t talking about dear Happy Acres?” 

“Anne wants us to have a garden, a sort of 
war garden,” explained Patsy. 

“We have them in Washington, you know, 
Cousin Agnes,” Anne said. “We raise lots of 
vegetables, and it isn’t hard work, with so many 
to help; and anyway, it’s worth working hard 
for, to help feed the world when it’s hungry and 
starving.” 

“And Steve asked where the garden could be,” 
Patsy continued her explanation. “Anne says 
it can be Happy Acres, even if they have to dig 
up the flowers.” 

“That would be dreadful!” exclaimed Alice 
Blair. 

“It’s dreadfuller for people to be starving,” 
said Anne. 

“Shucks! We couldn’t work a garden at 


66 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Happy Acres,” said Dick. “By the time we 
walked there after school, it would be time to 
walk back to do our home work.” 

“We could run,” suggested Sweet William. 

Mrs. Wilson laughed with the others; then she 
said: “Possibly you are right, Dick; and cer¬ 
tainly Anne is. Let me think a minute. If you 
boys are willing to give part of your time to work 
for the hungry, I will give part of my garden 
and my help. What do you say?” 

“Yes, ma’am, thank you!” screeched Sweet 
William, 

“I’m Sweet William’s partner,” said Steve. 

“I’ll help,” said Tom Walthall, “if you don’t 
ask me to do too much.” 

“So will I,” said Tom Mallett. 

“I’ll help when pa can spare me,” promised Joe 
Spencer. 

“I will, if Baldie will,” said John Eppes, who 
never wished to do anything without his brother 
Archibald. 

“Oh! I’ll be in it with the others,” said 
Archie. 

“Of course you will, David?” Anne appealed 
to the silent boy whose voice she had expected to 
hear first. 

“There’s my corn acre-” David began 

hesitatingly. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 67 

“Of course!” laughed Dick. 

“That’s just it,” Anne said eagerly. “You’ve 
done such splendid work, raising such fine corn 
and winning prizes. You know so much more 
than the rest of us about working crops that— 
why, we need you dreadfully.” 

David tried not to look pleased. “I’ll do what 
I can,” he agreed. “But I just tell you, I’m not 
going to neglect my corn acre for anything; that 
I’m not.” 

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Wilson. “And 
you, Dick—you’ll help, of course?” 

“No; no, Cousin Agnes,” Dick answered posi¬ 
tively. “I’m getting enough garden work to last 
my lifetime. And besides, I’ve got something 
else to do, if I ever get a chance at it.” 

“What part of the garden are you going to 
give us, Cousin Agnes?” asked David. 

“Let’s go and look over the ground,” said Mrs. 
Wilson. “I’ve just had it plowed and harrowed,, 
ready for planting.” 

She led the way to the big, old-fashioned gar¬ 
den. In front were beds of hardy flowers, and 
arbors and summerhouses covered with roses 
and jasmine and honeysuckle. Back of the flow¬ 
ers were vegetable beds and rows of raspberries 
and gooseberries and fig bushes. And in a far 
corner, hedged by boxwood and carpeted with 


68 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


blue-starred periwinkle,, rose the lichened marble 
slabs of the family burying-ground. 

David, the star member of the county Corn 
Club, looked admiringly at the fertile vegetable 
beds. “Gee!” he exclaimed. “I’d beat the record 
if my corn acre was like this; it’s rich as 
cream,” 

“It has been a garden more than a hundred 
years,” said Mrs. Wilson. “Broad Acres was 
the first clearing in the wilderness where The 
Village is now. Here,, boys, I am going to give 
you this sunny southeast square. Now, let’s see 
who are our gardeners. You’ll join, won’t you, 
Albert?” she said kindly to Albert Smith, who 
stood uncomfortably apart from any of the 
friendly groups. 

“No. I can’t,” he said abruptly. Then he 
turned his head with a queer little gesture as if 
he were listening to hear how his speech sounded. 
He added confusedly: “My uncle needs me to 
come home. I came to ask the arithmetic page 
lesson.” 

Mrs. Wilson indicated the page and then, as 
he slipped away, she turned to the other boys. 
All except Dick Osborne enrolled as members 
of The Village War-Garden Club. Meanwhile, 
the girls were whispering together, and Patsy 
became their spokeswoman. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 69 

“Cousin Agnes,” she said, “we want to war- 
garden, too.” 

“Y-yes, mother,” said Ruth. “We’ve been 
having flower gardens; why c-can’t we raise real 
things, beans and potatoes?” 

“You can; of course you can,” said her mother. 

There was a howl from the boys. 

“We don’t want girls bothering around,” said 
Archie. “Let them stay in the house and sew.” 

“They’ve got their Red Cross stuff,” said 
Steve. “That’s enough for them.” 

“We girls have Red Cross work in Washing¬ 
ton, and we do war gardening, too. And who 
suggested this garden, I’d like to know?” Anne 
asked. 

“That’s all right; suggest,” said Joe. “Girls 
are good at talking; but we don’t want them 
around in our way when we are working.” 

There was a clamor of indignation from the 
girls. 

“Boys! Girls!” Mrs. Wilson said in her school¬ 
room voice. In the silence that it brought, she 
went on: “Of course the girls may have a garden, 
if they wish. I’ll give them the strip of land by 
the rose garden.” 

But the girls scornfully rejected this offer. 

“We don’t want a little ribbon like that,” said 
Patsy. “We want a real garden or none at all. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


70 

We don’t care if you give us a bigger place than 
the boys have—I’m sure we can manage it—but 
we don’t want an inch less. There are more of 
us than there are of them; two more, counting 
Anne, who’s coming back in June.” 

“Give us the square by the one the b-b-boys 
have,” said Ruth. 

“Oh, you greedy!” said David. “That would 
be taking nearly all of Cousin Agnes’s garden, 
these two big squares.” 

“Make the boys divide their square with us, 
Cousin Agnes,” suggested Patsy. 

“No! no! no!” the boys objected loudly. 

“Who’s greedy now?” Patsy inquired scorn¬ 
fully. 

“G-g-give us that s-southwest square, moth¬ 
er,” urged Ruth. “You and I don’t need such 
a big garden. Let’s 1 - 1 -let the Belgians have it.” 

“Well,” Mrs. Wilson agreed. She and Ruth 
did need the garden; it was their main support; 
but in this time of world need, they must give 
not only all they were able, but more and still 
more. She and Ruth would get on, somehow. 
“You girls may have the square next to the 
boys,” she said. 

There were groans and cheers. 

“We’ll see which do the best work. To¬ 
morrow morning let’s meet here and start the 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


7i 

planting. Bring hoes and rakes. I,” she added, 
“will supply seeds.” 

That meant another sacrifice. She and Ruth 
would stint themselves to give for seed the peas 
and beans and potatoes they had stored for food. 

On the way home, Dick and some of the others 
stopped at the post office. It occupied a corner 
of Mr. Blair’s general merchandise shop and it 
was,, Black Mayo said, the Village club where 
young and old gathered in the afternoons for 
mail and gossip. 

When Dick went in, there were a dozen vil¬ 
lagers and countrymen lounging in the room, 
Mr. Blair was sorting the mail, and Black Mayo 
was perched on the counter, reading the news in 
Mr. Blair’s paper the only daily that came to The 
Village. 

“The British are holding Vimy Ridge,” he 
said. 

“What about Congress and army plans?” 
asked Red Mayo. 

“Congress is still discussing, discussing. Why 
doesn’t it go ahead and put a draft bill in shape? 
The President’s right; that’s the way to raise an 
army.” 

“Hey, Black Mayo! Here’s a letter for Polly,,” 
said Mr. Blair. “And here are two letters for 
Mr. Carl Schmidt.” He looked around. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


72 

The man who lived at the old Tolliver place 
came forward. “I guess they are for me,” he 
said, “from somebody that did not know my 
name; it’s Smith, good American Charley 
Smith.” 

“Carl Schmidt; that’s a queer-sounding name. 
What is it?” asked Mr. Jones, a stout, red-faced 
countryman. 

“It is a German name,” Black Mayo said 
crisply. 

“My father did from Germany come,” the man 
who called himself Smith said hastily, darting 
an angry glance at Black Mayo and then looking 
around without meeting any one’s eyes. “He 
was sensible, and he did come to America. I 
was here born. I am an American citizen.” 

“I’d hate to be one of them low-down Ger¬ 
mans,” said Pete Walthall, taking a chew of 
tobacco. 

“Ach! so would I,” Smith proclaimed loudly. 
“They are bad people. Awful bad people.” He 
met defiantly Black Mayo’s quizzical eyes. “I 
got no use for them German peoples.” 

“Nobody has,” said Mr. Tavis. 

“Oh, yes!” Black Mayo declared. “I have. 
One of my best friends is a German, a fine fellow 
named Kuno Kleist that I spent months with, in 
Mexico, helping him collect bugs and butterflies.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 73 

“Why, Mr. Mayo!” said Pete. “You mean to 
say you don’t hate Germany?” 

“I hate the Germany of Prussianism, power- 
mad Junkerism, the 'blood and iron’ of Frederick 
the Great and Bismarck and Kaiser William,” 
said Black Mayo; “but I love the Germany of 
Goethe and Schiller and Luther and Beethoven.” 

“Germany is one!” Mr. Smith’s voice rang out. 
“It is one, I say.” 

“So are we all, all one.” Black Mayo looked 
around with a sudden winning smile. “Remem¬ 
ber that first Christmas when German and Brit¬ 
ish soldiers came out of the trenches to exchange 
food and to talk together. 'You are of the same 
religion as we, and to-day is the Day of Peace,/ 
a German said to a Scottish officer. And those 
men had to be transferred to other parts of the 
line; they were enemies no longer, but friends; 
they could not fight one another. 

“Facts come out now and then that show the 
difference in spirit between people and war lords. 
A German paper recently announced that the 
people of a certain town had been jailed for im¬ 
proper conduct to prisoners and their names were 
printed, to make their shame known to coming 
generations. 

“An American consul investigated the case. 
He found that a trainload of Canadian prisoners 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


74 

had been sidetracked in the little town, and the 
citizens had found out they were thirsty and 
starving; so they brought food and drink. This 
was the crime for which they were imprisoned 
and held up to shame! 

“Oh! the war lords are trying to carry out 
their policy of frightfulness. But they have 
studied history to little purpose if they think 
Edith Cavell and the Lusitania victims and the 
murdered Belgians and the tortured prisoners are 
dead.” 

“What do you mean, Cousin Mayo,” asked Dick. 

“Are the Greeks of Thermopylae dead? Or 
Roland and King Arthur, who perhaps never 
lived?” Leaving Dick to make his own explana¬ 
tion, Mr. Osborne turned to Mr. Blair. “Will, 
give me two pounds of nails, please. I must be 
going.” 

“Going!” said Mr. Blair, in surprise. It was 
an unwritten law that when a man came to the 
post office he was to loaf there until night drove 
him home. 

“I’m busy making a new pigeon cote.” 

“So you’ve gone back to the amusement of 
your boyhood, eh?” said Mr. Blair, as he weighed 
the nails. 

There had always been pigeons at Larkland, 
Black Mayo Osborne’s home. When the house 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 75 

was built, the master, the first Osborne in Vir¬ 
ginia,, erected a dovecote and stocked it with 
birds from the family home in England. There 
they had been ever since. Sometimes they were 
carefully bred; sometimes they were neglected; 
but always they were there, flying, cooing, nest¬ 
ing in the quiet old country place. 

As a boy, Black Mayo took great interest in 
raising and training them. And this spring he 
had sent to a famous breeder for new stock and 
had begun again to train carrier pigeons. 

He answered Mr. Blair with a smile and a nod, 
and started out. “Hey, Dickon!” he said. “It’s 
a long time since you came to see the pigeons. 
Have you lost interest in them?” 

“No; no, sir,” answered Dick, looking embar¬ 
rassed. “I—I—that I haven’t.” 

“Richard is—h’m!—keeping bounds this 
month,” Red Mayo said austerely. “He 
diso-” 

“I understand.” Black Mayo spared Dick a 
public explanation. “Well, come when you can. 
I’ll bring you one of my young birds to-morrow, 
to turn loose for a trial flight.” 

“Oh, thank you, Cousin Mayo!” 

Mr. Smith sidled to the door and looked after 
Mr. Osborne,, with a malignant scowl. 

“He, the one you call ‘Black Mayo,’ is—isn’t 



76 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

he queer?” he said to Jake Andrews and Mac 
Hight, who were sitting on the porch. 

“What do you mean?” asked Jake Andrews. 

“He takes up for the Germans; says they are 
such good, kind people and he loves them. It 
sounds to me strange to hear a man call himself 
now a friend of the German peoples.” 

“Shucks! Black Mayo ain’t said that; is he, 
Mr. Tavis?” Jake appealed to the old man who 
now came shuffling out on the porch. 

“Yes, he did,,” said Mr. Tavis. “He explained 
at it somehow; but he certainly said he loved them 
Germans that are tearing the world to pieces over 
yonder.” 

“And here, too,” said Jake. “Ain’t they been 
blowing up railroad bridges, and factories, and 
public buildings? Why, they’ve got soldiers 
guarding the warehouses at South City; near us 
as that!” 

“That’s what South City gets for being on the 
railroad where all sorts of folks go traipsing 
up and down,” said Mr. Tavis. “I stand to what 
I’ve always said, I’m glad the railroad don’t come 
a-nigh The Village.” 

“It’s good that Mr. Osborne so talks here 
where you permit him what he pleases to say,” 
said Mr. Smith. “In New York State a man for 
that talk would be arrested and punished.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


77 


“Shucks!” said Mr. Tavis. “Black Mayo 
didn’t mean no harm. He always had a funny 
way of talking.” 

“You heard him say he loves the Germans; not 
so?” insisted Mr. Smith. 

“Well, yes; he certainly said that,” admitted 
Mr. Tavis again. 

“H-m-m! That’s mighty curious talk,” said 
Jake. 


CHAPTER V 



HE next morning the young folks gath¬ 


ered at Broad Acres. All the school 


children were there except Albert Smith 
and Dick Osborne; and Dick, poor boy, was toil¬ 
ing sullenly and alone in the garden at home. 

The young war gardeners became so interested 
in the task they had set themselves that they re¬ 
turned to it in the afternoon, and there Black 
Mayo found them when he came to bring Mrs. 
Wilson some tomato plants. 

“What is this, Agnes? a Chatterbox Club? ,, 
he inquired, setting a basket carefully in a shaded 
place. “From the noise I heard at a distance, I 
thought crows or blue jays might be holding a 
caucus in your garden.” 

The young folks were duly indignant at the 
slander, and asserted that their hands—most of 
them, anyway, and—well, most of the time— 
were going as fast as their tongues. 

“Come and see what we are doing,” invited 
Patsy. “Here are our potatoes; we are giving 
half of our garden to them. Isn’t the soil fine, 
and aren’t the rows pretty and even? Cousin 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


79 

Agnes showed us how to lay them off, by a string 
tied to sticks at the ends of the row.” 

“I wish the potatoes would hurry and come 
up,” said Sweet William, “so I can get the bugs 
off them.” 

“Hey, old scout!” said Black Mayo. “Are you 
in it, too?” 

“Course I am,” was the complacent answer. 
“I was the first to join. Wasn’t I, Cousin Agnes ? 
I reckon I’ve walked ten miles—well, I know I’ve 
walked a mile—to-day, carrying buckets of po¬ 
tatoes to the children to plant. Didn’t I, Cousin 
Agnes?” 

“You’ve been helping, dear. We couldn’t get 
on without you. Nothing in The Village could 
get on without our Sweet William,” said Mrs. 
Wilson, kissing him. 

He accepted the caress soberly and then said 
with a little frown: “I reckon I’m ’most too big 
for ladies to kiss.” 

“Ah, Billy boy, you’ll change your mind in a 
few years,” laughed Black Mayo. “What’s that 
bag-of-bonesy thing at your heels?” 

“He’s my dog; he’s Scalawag,” the youngster 
explained with dignity. 

“A dog, eh? A poor excuse for a dog! 
Where’d you get it?” 

“I didn’t get him. He came and adopted me,” 


8 o 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


explained Sweet William. “He’s a mighty good 
dog. See! He’s watching me like he wants to 
help.” 

“Cousin Mayo, look at the bean rows I am 
laying off,” called Patsy. 

“Really and truly, Cousin Mayo,” said Anne, 
“don’t you think it’s good for us to have a gar¬ 
den?” 

“Truly and really, my dear,” he said, “I think 
it’s splendid. You are helping—and how much 
the willing, diligent children all over the land 
can help!—in America’s work of saving the 
world from starving. The fighters can’t farm, 
so we must feed the armies; and we have the 
people of France and Belgium on our hearts and 
hands; and there are the U-boats—we must have 
food enough to send another shipload for every 
one they sink. It’s a big job.” 

“We gardeners will do our part. I’m going 
to help when I come back in June,” said Anne. 

“She’s helping while she’s away, Cousin 
Mayo,” said Patsy. “She suggested our having 
a garden. And her Happy Acres, all except the 
flower part, is to be put in corn. Our Canning 
Club is going to can corn and butterbeans and 
tomatoes together, to make Brunswick stew. 
Cousin Agnes says we can surely sell all we 
put up.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


81 


“The girls think pie of their old Canning 
Club,” said David, jealously. “We boys are 
doing real work in our Corn Club, and we are 
going to have a real garden; not dawdle around,, 
like a parcel of girls.” 

“Come, come!” chided Mr. Osborne. “You 
are working for the same cause. You are in 
friendly camps, not hostile ones. By the way, 
what are their names?” 

“Names? They haven’t any,” said Patsy. 

“Pshaw! They must have names; of course 
they must. Camp Feed Friend, isn’t that a good 
name for yours, Patsy? And the boys’ plot can 
be Camp Fight Foe.” 

“All right,” said David; then he laughed. 
“Maybe the girls will raise enough to feed Friend 
Humming Bird!” 

“Here, my boy!” said Mr. Osborne. “It isn’t 
a sign of wisdom or experience to be scornful 
of girls and women. You may do better work 
than the girls; and then again you may not. 
Time will prove. Suppose you keep a record of 
your work and have a competitive exhibition of 
garden products this autumn. I’ll give a prize, 
the silver cup I cut my teeth on, to the best 
gardeners.” 

“Fine!” said Steve. “That cup is as good as 


ours. 


82 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“ 'There’s many a slip 
’Twixt cup and lip/ ” 

Patsy reminded him, with a saucy tilt of her chin. 

Mr. Osborne laughed. "Well, while I loaf 
here, my work’s getting no forwarder. I must 
go home. By the way, Agnes,, I have two or 
three bushels of potatoes for you that I’ll 
send—” 

"But, Mayo, you can’t spare-” 

"Neither could you,” he said, looking at the 
war-garden rows. "G’by! Oh, I was forgetting 
the pigeon I brought Dick.” He picked up his 
basket. "Poor hungry bird!” 

"Hungry? Let me feed it,,” said Mrs. Wilson. 
"Here are a few peas left in my seed box.” 

"Oh, no! no, thank you,” he answered. "It is 
a racing pigeon that I’m beginning to train. It 
must start off hungry, so it will fly home to be 
fed.” 

"Let me see it, Cousin Mayo; please let me 
take it in my hands,” said Anne. She cuddled 
the dove against her cheek. "What a pretty, 
gentle bird it is! The emblem of peace, isn’t it? 
Oh, what a shame it seems to send it from this 
quiet, sweet place to those terrible battlefields!” 

Mr. Osborne put one caressing hand on the 
bird and the other on Anne’s head. 

"These God’s dear creatures bear messages 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 83 

of help and rescue through the battle cloud; they 
soar above and beyond it, and their wings catch 
the eternal sunshine. Ah! our doves of war are 
still—are more than ever—the birds of peace. 
For this war isn’t just a fight for territory and 
undisturbed sea ways; it is a war for freedom 
and human rights, and so for true and lasting 
peace. Agnes,” he turned to Mrs. Wilson, “have 
you given our young folks the President’s mes¬ 
sage ?” 

“Not yet,” she answered. 

“Not yet!” he repeated reproachfully. “And 
already it is being read in French schools. It is 
a part of the history of our times, of all time; it’s 
like the Declaration of Independence, but wider, 
higher, grander.” 

“I’m going to read it to my history class,” said 
Mrs. Wilson. 

“To every one of these young folks, from 
primer babies up, and now,” Black Mayo said 
impetuously. “Get the paper. Let’s sit in the 
summerhouse here and fancy it’s the Capitol and 
this is the history-making night of April 2d. 

“Here we are, waiting for the President. 
He’s coming. The throngs on the streets are 
cheering him at every step. The floor of the 
House is crowded,,—its own members, senators, 
Cabinet officers, judges of the Supreme Court, 


84 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

representatives of the Allied nations. The gal¬ 
leries, too, are crowded; people waited at the 
doors for hours for the precious privilege of a 
seat. 

“The President rises, solemn and resolute with 
a great duty. He stands there before the House, 
before the world for all time. He is America 
speaking. He gives the message that devotes a 
hundred million people to war for American 
rights and world freedom. 

“It is done. He turns to go. And now, ah! 
now statesmen are not Democrats, not Republi¬ 
cans; they are only patriots. Men who have 
stood with the President, men who have stood 
against him, throng shoulder to shoulder to clasp 
his hand and pledge themselves to support him 
in this sacred cause. Only the 'little group of 
willful men’ stands shamefully apart. 

“Here are the words that expressed and in¬ 
spired the soul of America.” 

And then Mayo Osborne read the President’s 
war message. 

“ 'The wrongs against which we now array 
ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the 
very roots of human life. . . . 

“ 'We are at the beginning of an age in which 
it will be insisted that the same standards of con¬ 
duct and of responsibility for wrong done shall 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 85 

be observed among nations and their govern¬ 
ments that are observed among the individual 
citizens of civilized states. . . . 

“ ‘The world must be made safe for democ¬ 
racy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested 
foundations of political liberty. We have no 
selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquests, 
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our¬ 
selves, no material compensation for the sacri¬ 
fices we shall freely make. . . . 

“ ‘The right is more precious than peace, 
and we shall fight for the things which we have 
always carried nearest our hearts—for democ¬ 
racy, for the right of those who submit to 
authority to have a voice in their own govern¬ 
ments, for the rights and liberties of small 
nations, for a universal dominion of right by such 
a concert of free people as shall bring peace and 
safety to all nations and make the world itself 
at last free. 

“ ‘To such a task we can dedicate our lives and 
our fortunes, everything that we are and every¬ 
thing that we have, with the pride of those who 
know that the day has come when America is 
privileged to spend her blood and her might for 
the principles that gave her birth and happiness 
and the peace which she has treasured. 

“ ‘God helping her, she can do no other.’ ” 


86 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


There was a minute of silence at the end. 

With eyes shining through tears, Mrs. Wilson 
turned to her daughter. 

“Oh, Ruth, Ruth!” she said. “If only you 
were a boy in khaki, and I at your side!” 

“Oh, mother! I w-w-wish I were!” cried 
Ruth. 

“It’s wonderful!” Black Mayo tapped the 
paper with a thoughtful finger. “He Ameri¬ 
canizes the war, and does it by putting aside 
everything for which the 'land of dollars’ is sup¬ 
posed to stand and upholding our old high ideals. 
No indemnity, no conquests. The Lusitania was 
an insult to our flag; more than that, it was a 
dishonor to humanity.” 

“He starts us on a high-going road,” said Mrs. 
Wiison. 

“Please,” broke in David, “let’s finish planting 
our corn before dark.” 

“Righto, boy!” exclaimed Black Mayo, jump¬ 
ing up. “And my plow’s standing still. Geminy! 
how time flies!” 

He hurried away and the war gardeners went 
back to work. 

“Will you look who’s coming?” Patsy ex¬ 
claimed presently, glancing toward the gate. 
“Jeff Spencer and Will Eppes!” 

Mrs. Wilson hastened to meet the visitors who 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 87 

had been her pupils from ABC days till they 
went to university and engineering corps. 

“Why, Jeff! I didn’t know you were at home!” 
she said, shaking hands with the boy in front, a 
pleasant-looking, round-faced fellow, so fat that 
he resembled a well-stuffed pincushion. 

“I—I am not at the University any longer, 
Miss Agnes,” he said soberly. 

“Not at the University!” She looked at him in 
dismay. He had always been a mischievous 
chap, and she had had her doubts and fears about 
his college course, but gradually these had sub¬ 
sided. Now he was in his senior year; and here 
he was back home. What scrape had he got into ? 

Jeff’s light-blue eyes were twinkling, and now 
he laughed till his fair, freckled face reddened 
to the roots of his sandy hair. 

“I always could get a rise out of you, Miss 
Agnes!” he said. “Here you are wondering 
what I’ve done to get sent away from the Uni¬ 
versity, just as mother did. And it never oc¬ 
curred to you that I’ve left of my own free will.” 
A new light came into the bright eyes. “I’ve 
enlisted. And, gee! won’t a uniform be full of 
me!” 

“Enlisted!” she echoed. “But, Jeff, your 
mother—she always said she could never con¬ 


sent to- 



88 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Oh, she’s a trump, the ace of trumps! Of 
course she hates war. The War took so many 
of her people—her father and both her uncles— 
and all the things. She knows what war is. But 
when I put it up to her, she said ‘Go!’ Of course 
I’d have had to do it anyway. I couldn’t look 
myself in the face in a mirror if I sat safe at 
home and let others risk their lives to make the 
world a decent place for me to live in. So 
I’ve come to say good-by to you who”—he 
returned to his waggish tone—“put me up to 
going.” 

“I?” She was amazed. “Why, Jeff, I’ve not 
seen you even to say ‘how-dye-do’ since war was 
declared.” 

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about lately. It was 
the way you taught us history; not Jack’s book 
that was so dry every time we turned a page it 
raised dust, but in spite of it you made us know 
what America stands for, the things for which 
a man ought to be willing and glad to risk his 
life. Grandmother says”—he grinned—“I’m, 
fighting for Confederate principles, the right of 
self-government. Isn’t she a darling, red-hot old 
Southerner?” 

“And I’m going, too, Cousin Agnes,” said 
William Eppes. “I didn’t know it till yester¬ 
day; but father knew it.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 89 

“Your father knew it?” she repeated. 

“Yes’m. He’d been might quiet lately, and 
at last he came out with, ‘there never had been 
an American war without an Eppes in it, and 
here are the two of us, and I can take my choice; 
but he hoped Td stay at home and let him go, 
being a Spanish-American vet/ I asked him if 
he knew what a whopper he was telling. Why, 
he’d have dropped in his tracks if I had showed 
the white feather and said I wasn’t willing to go. 
But I just hadn’t thought of it. It didn’t take 
me two secs to decide. Of course I’m going.” 

“And so you boys are joining the army; going 
to France to fight.” 

It seemed but yesterday since they were little 
fellows in her primer class. And now they were 
going, with the bodies and hearts of men, to do 
men’s work in the world. Through the mist in 
her eyes she had a vision: New pages of the his¬ 
tory book opened, heroes walked out, took form 
and life; lo! they were her own schoolboys—shy 
Fayett Mallett, mischievous Jefif Spencer, slow 
William Eppes—and others, others would 
come. Why, here were the youngsters, even 
little Sweet William, putting aside play to do 
their part. 

“Oh, goody! goody!” Sweet William was say¬ 
ing now, in his high, eager little voice. “We’ve 


go 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


got soldiers, our own soldiers, to send things to. 
Come on, Jeff; you and Will, look at our gar¬ 
dens.” 

And then half a dozen, talking at once, ex¬ 
plained about Camp Fight Foe and Camp Feed 
Friend. 

“I’m surely glad to see these gardens,” said 
Jeff. “I always was a hearty eater, and my 
‘stomach for fighting’ needs to be a full one. 
We’re going to claim the best food we see over 
there, aren’t we, Bill? biggest potatoes and 
sweetest beans, for I know they’ll come from The 
Village straight to us.” 

“We’ll think of you when the weather gets 
warm, and we’ll work hard and not loaf on the 
job,” said Alice Blair. 

“Thank you,,” said William. “It seems a 
shame for you to tan your face and blister your 
hands—for us.” 

“I like to do it—for you,” said Alice; and then 
she blushed. 

“I should think you’d be going to Fort Myer, 
Jeff,” said David. 

“Well, I did think about the O. T. C.,” an¬ 
swered Jeff; “but I felt sorry for those poor 
officers. It seemed to me they need a few privates 
under them ; so I decided to be in the ranks. And 
I’m going to try to get with Northern boys.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


9i 


“Jeff Spencer! Why-” 

“So I can do missionary work,” he explained. 
“Those Harvard chaps I met on our last game— 
bully fellows they were!—thought the old United 
States began in 1620 on Plymouth Rock. I broke 
to ’em the news about 1607 and Jamestown,— 
that before their Mayflower sailed, Virginia was 
here, with a House of Burgesses standing for 
freemen’s rights, just as we’re standing to-day. 
Hurrah for Jamestown and Woodrow Wilson!” 

The enthusiasm excited by the President’s 
message and the volunteers extended to the 
smallest small boys. For weeks they had been 
carrying on a war play on their way home from 
school. Now the game was blocked. The boys 
who had composed the kaiser’s forces refused to 
be Germans; they were Americans. 

At last, after a whispered consultation with 
Jeff Spencer, Joe Eppes said with a grin: “Oh, 
wait a minute. I’ll be the Germans one more 
time; I’ll be them all, kaiser and generals and 
army.” 

He ran home and soon came back, wearing a 
German helmet made of an old derby hat with 
a tin oil can fastened on top of it. 

He did the goosestep backward down the hill, 
shouting, “On! on! on! straight to Paris!” At 
Tinkling Water, he swaggered on the foot log and 



92 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


tumbled, with a mighty splash, into the water, to 
the huge delight of the other children who loudly 
applauded the ignominious end of the German 
forces. 


CHAPTER VI 


T HE first Saturday afternoon in May 
found a busy group of ladies and girls 
in the big parlor at Broad Acres which 
Mrs. Wilson had given up to Red Cross work. 

Saturday was usually sacred to needle and 
broom and cookstove, in preparation for the 
quiet, strictly kept Presbyterian Sunday; but 
to-day was an exception. A Red Cross box was 
to be sent off next week, and everything else was 
put aside to get it ready. 

Mrs. Wilson was cutting out hospital shirts. 
“This finishes our last piece of cloth,” she said 
regretfully. “I do wish we had some money.” 

There was an awkward silence. Money had to 
be mentioned sometimes in a shop—asking Mr. 
Blair the price of shoes and umbrellas, in an 
apologetic tone. But to wish for it, in public and 
aloud! No one had ever before heard a Village 
lady do such a thing. 

Miss Fanny Morrison, who had charge of the 
work, broke the embarrassing silence. “These 
shirts ain’t ready to pack,” she said with a frown, 
as she pushed aside a bundle she had just opened. 
93 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


94 

“Eve got to rip ’em and do ’em over. Every seam 
is crooked or puckered.” 

“If you would tell whoever did them-” 

began Mrs. Blair. 

“Course I can’t tell her,,” said the seamstress, 
who was supposed to have a tongue as sharp 
as her needle. “It’s Mrs. Tavis. Ain’t she doing 
her best, with her dim old eyes and trembly old 
hands? I can’t tell her it would save me time for 
her to sit and twirl her thumbs, and let me make 
the shirts instead of unmaking ’em and making 
’em over. Well, we’ve got a lot done. And you 
girls have certainly worked splendid. I thought 
you-all—Alice and Ruth and Patsy and Mary 
Spencer and Essie Walthall, the bunch of you— 
would just be a lot of trouble. But you’re faith¬ 
ful and painstaking, and you do as good work 
as anybody.” 

“We like to do it,” said Patsy, whose fingers 
were flying in the effort to finish a sweater. 

“This will be six pairs of socks I’ve knit,” said 
Alice Blair; “and I thought I’d never get done 
that first pair!” 

“You’ve learned how,” said her mother; then 
she chuckled: “Will says he expects to wake up 
some night and find me knitting in my sleep!” 

“Ah, dears!” Mrs. Spencer said in her gentle, 
quavering old voice. “This takes me back to 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


95 

The War. We used to gather here, in this very 
room, to knit socks and make bandages and tear 
linen sheets and underwear into lint for our poor, 
dear, wounded soldiers.” 

“Those awful days!” said Miss Fanny. “I 
certainly am thankful we are not really in this 
war; in it with our men and our homes.” 

“I am beginning to feel,” Mrs. Wilson said 
quietly, “that we are in it, and that this is our 
war. There are Fayett and Jeff and William; 
and the President’s war message; and now the 
draft.” 

“It’s awful to think they may make our boys 
go to foreign parts to fight,” groaned Mrs. Blair. 

“They don’t seem to need much making,” re¬ 
marked Mrs. Wilson. 

“Europe doesn’t seem so far off as it used to,” 
said Mrs. Red Mayo Osborne, who had locked 
herself out of the bookcase for a whole week. 
“Who’d have thought, three years ago,, we’d be 
giving up our Saturday duties to make things to 
send to France and Belgium?” 

“Europe isn’t so far off,” Mrs. Wilson replied. 
“The Germans gave us two object lessons last 
year, to prove that—sending the Deutschland 
and U-53 to our very harbors. And next thing 
we know, aircraft will cross the ocean.” 

The others laughed at the idea of such a thing. 


96 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Well, there are other nearnesses,” said Mrs. 
Wilson. “The ties are tightening among Eng¬ 
lish-speaking people. Didn’t it thrill you to read 
about the Stars and Stripes floating from the 
highest tower of the Parliament buildings?—the 
first time a foreign flag was ever displayed 
there.” 

“I didn’t care so much about that.” Miss 
Fanny tossed up her chin; she prided herself on 
being an “unreconstructed rebel” and kept a little 
Confederate flag draped over a chromo of “Lee 
and his generals.” “But,” she went on, “it did 
give me a queer feeling to read about that great 
service the English had in St. Paul’s, to celebrate 
America’s joining in the war. They sang ‘O 
God! our help in ages past,’ the very hymn we 
were singing Sunday morning.” 

“We people of the same tongue and blood, are 
getting together,” said Mrs. Red Mayo. 

“I don’t see anything good anywhere outside 
The Village” declared Mrs. Walthall. “When my 
old man comes home and tells the cruel, wicked, 
dreadful, terrible things”—Mrs. Walthall’s 
language was broken out with adjectives like 
smallpox—“Will Blair reads in his paper—you 
feel as if the world was upside down and 
something mean and awful might even happen 
here!” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


97 

This was such a wild flight of fancy that every 
one laughed. 

“Why, even during The War,” said Mrs. 
Spencer, “The War that we were in, bodies of 
all the men and hearts of all the women and 
children, even that, my dears, didn’t come to The 
Village, except the one raid from Sherman’s 
army marching north that awful April.” 

“I am glad we are shut up here in this safe, 
quiet little corner,” said Mrs. Blair; “for, as Mrs. 
Walthall says, terrible things are happening. 
Not only factories and munition plants destroyed 
in the North, but railroad bridges and trestles 
right here in Virginia; a bridge near Norfolk, a 
bridge that trains with troops and supplies and 
munitions have to cross, was saturated with oil 
and set afire, by foreigners and negroes.” Her 
voice dropped. 

“There is our bridge-” began Mrs. Wal¬ 

thall. 

She was interrupted by a little indignant stir. 
Mrs. Osborne said crisply, “That bridge is just 
as safe as our own doorsteps.” 

“They say,” Mrs. Walthall said, “that in New 
York poison has been put in Red Cross bandages 
and dressings. I declare, I feel like we ought 
to inspect our things and keep them locked up.” 

“Nonsense, Anna!” exclaimed Mrs. Red Mayo. 



98 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Inspect things! And lock them up! Who ever 
locks up anything in The Village? Why, we 
never lock our outside doors, and in summer¬ 
time they stand wide open every night.” 

“Strange and curious and terrible things are 
happening in other places,” said Mrs. Walt¬ 
hall. 

“In other places,” Mrs. Osborne repeated, 
dryly and emphatically. 

The ladies were so absorbed in work and talk 
that they did not hear the click of the front gate 
and the stumbling and stamping of feet coming 
up the steps. 

Susan opened the parlor door. “There’s some 
men folks out here, Miss Agnes,” she said to her 
mistress. “They say please’m they want to see 
the Red Cross ladies.” 

“To see me?” asked Mrs. Wilson. 

“To see the Red Cross ladies; that’s what they 
say, Miss Agnes.” 

“Ask them to come in,” said Mrs. Wilson. 

Miss Fanny modestly hid a hospital shirt she 
was ripping and began to knit a wristlet. Susan 
opened the door and ushered in nine old men. 
They were feeble and broken with years, years 
not only of age but of poverty and many hard¬ 
ships. They shuffled in, some on wooden legs, 
some dragging paralyzed feet, some supporting 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


99 

rheumatic limbs with canes and crutches. There 
were palsied arms and more than one empty 
sleeve. 

The old fellows came in panting and wheezing 
from the exertion of climbing the steps. At the 
door they took off their hats, baring bald pates 
and straggling white locks, and stood in line. 

Mrs. Wilson went forward swiftly and greeted 
them with gracious courtesy, but they did not 
respond as friends and neighbors. 

“We came on an errand to you Red Cross 
ladies/’ Captain Anderson said formally. “We” 
—he straightened his old shoulders—“are Con¬ 
federate veterans.” 

At the words the ladies came to their feet., in 
respect and homage. 

“Confederate veterans!” Captain Anderson 
repeated. 

The bent, stiff forms stirred with a memory 
rather than a reality of soldierly bearing; the 
bleared, dim old eyes brightened. 

Their spokesman went on in his thin, quaver¬ 
ing voice: “Ladies, fair flowers of Virginia 
womanhood, we, the little remnant surviving of 
the gallant defenders of our glorious Lost Cause, 
greet you. By the noble generosity of The Vil¬ 
lage, funds have been raised for us to attend 
the Reunion at Washington. 



100 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“It is a grand and glorious place to hold the 
Reunion. We are glad and proud that—that our 
old comrades are to meet there—in the capital 
they threatened six times by their dauntless and 
renowned valor, but the streets of which they 
were never to tread in uniform and under 
flag until now, after a half century of peace. 
They are to camp in the very shadow of the 
Capitol of our glorious and reunited country, 
and their battle-shattered and death-thinned 
ranks are to parade before the President and be 
addressed by him—the first President since The 
War born on the sacred soil of old Virginia, and 
the greatest President since Washington. Three 
cheers for President Wilson!” 

They were given with a will by the thin, 
cracked old voices. 

“And—and-” stammered Captain Ander¬ 

son. 

“Gettysburg,” said old Mr. Tavis, in a stage 
whisper. 

“Yes. Gettysburg; Gettysburg. That comes 
presently.” He mopped his brow with a ban¬ 
danna handkerchief. “A-ah! The President to 
address us. Yes, yes! No more is needed to 
make it a grand and perfect occasion. But more 
is to be added. The veterans in gray and their 
brethren in blue are to make a pilgrimage to 



lOl 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Gettysburg, that was the high-water mark of our 
glorious and unsuccessful war; there is to be 
erected a monument to our brave comrades, the 
heroes that fell on that bloody field. I tell you., 
ladies, we are as glad and proud of it all as if we 
were going to that Reunion ourselves.” 

“But you are going!” cried Patsy. 

“And now here's war again—we don't count 
that little skirmish with Spain—but now the 
United States is in a real war, and South and 
North and East and West are standing shoulder 
to shoulder together. 

“This isn't like The War we fought, a decent 
war of man against man on the earth God gave 
them to fight over. This war—it’s like nothing 
that ever was before in civilized times—robbing 
and burning towns by the hundred, shooting 
down unarmed people in gangs,, killing men with 
poisonous gases like you would so many rats, 
sinking ships without giving folks a chance for 
their lives, .dropping bombs from airships on 
homes and schools and hospitals. 

“It makes our hearts sick for people to suffer 
such things; and it makes our blood boil for peo¬ 
ple to do them. So we’ve talked it over together, 
we old Confeds, and we’re all of one mind. We 
want to help the women and children and the 
pieces of men left by this hellish fighting. So 


102 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


here is the money, please, ma’am”—he held out a 
purse to Mrs. Wilson—“that you-all so generous¬ 
ly raised to send us to the Reunion. We bring it 
to you as our contribution to the Red Cross.” 

“Oh!” cried Patsy, “but you mustn’t miss it, 
the grandest of all Reunions. You must go.” 

He shook his head. 

“This is what Marse Robert would do, if he 
was here to-day,” he said simply, looking up now 
in his old age, as to a beacon, to the hero he had 
adoringly followed in youth. 

Mrs. Wilson controlled her voice and spoke: 
“We accept your offering; don’t we?” She 
turned to her companions, and every head was 
bowed. “We accept it in the noble spirit in which 
it is given, a spirit worthy of your peerless leader. 
And we thank you from our hearts,, in the name 
of suffering humanity, to whose service it is con¬ 
secrated.” 

“But for you to give up the Reunion, the Re¬ 
union that you’ve looked forward to!” mourned 
Miss Fanny. 

The old men glanced at one another with a 
sort of shy glee. Then Captain Anderson said: 
“That isn’t all. We are going to volunteer! 
They’re going to have that draft and raise sol¬ 
diers. Folks said at first they’d just need Ameri¬ 
can dollars and food and steel; but they’re calling 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


103 

for soldiers now. And I tell you they’ll need 
American valor. As long as war is war, they’ll 
want men . The young soldiers, the drafted boys, 
will do their best. But we—well, we are going 
to write to the President and tell him we are 
ready to go., and we seasoned old soldiers will 
show those youngsters what fighting is!” 

While the old heroes were making their offer¬ 
ing, Dick Osborne was creeping along the edge 
of a field near The Village, carrying in his arms 
something bundled up in a newspaper. He 
scrambled through the churchyard hedge and 
crept into the woodshed at the back of the church. 
Now that its winter uses were over, no one else 
gave the shed a look or a thought, and Dick had 
hidden here his mining tools and a bundle with 
something white in it. 

His garden task was off his hands at last, and 
he had planned to spend to-day at the old mine; 
but Patsy had watched him keenly all the morn¬ 
ing, and this afternoon David and Steve were at 
work in a cornfield near the road. Usually it 
would be easy enough to elude them, but not to¬ 
day, burdened with the tools he had to carry. And 
anyway, he had devised a plan to lend interest 
and excitement to the long, weary way to the 
mine. In order to carry out his plan and avoid 
embarrassing questions, he had obtained permis- 


104 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

sion to spend the night with his cousin at the 
mill. 

Safe in the shed, he opened the package he had 
been carrying so carefully and chuckled as he 
looked at its contents. It was a cow’s skull! 

“Uh, it’s a beauty!” he said, gazing admiringly 
at the bleached and whitened old thing. “And 
when I fix it-!” 

He proceeded to “fix it” by pasting green tissue 
paper over the eyeholes and fastening his flash¬ 
light inside. Then he stood back and looked at it. 
Ah, it was as fearful looking as he had hoped it 
would be! He opened the other package and 
took out a sheet which he smeared with phos¬ 
phorus. It was getting dark now; late enough, 
Dick thought, for him to venture out. He fas¬ 
tened the tools together with an old chain and 
slung them over his shoulder; then he draped 
the sheet around him and fastened the skull on his 
head. He crept out of the shed, slipped around 
the corner of the church, and looked up and down 
the road. 

The coast was clear, and he took the road to 
Redville. For a mile he had it to himself. Then 
he heard wheels and voices behind him. He 
hesitated a minute, then prudently withdrew to 
the wayside. It might be people who would ac¬ 
cept him as a ghost; or it might not. Ah! It was 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 105 

Mr. Spencer, trotting- homeward from The Vil¬ 
lage, with his son Joe. Dick crouched in the 
bushes. 

“Wait a minute, pa,” said Joe. “There’s some¬ 
thing queer in those chinquapin bushes; some¬ 
thing white and light looking. Let’s see what 
it is.” 

“Shuh! It’s just Gordan Jones’s old white 
cow,” replied Mr. Spencer. “We haven’t time to 
stop. We’re late for supper already.” 

When they were safely out of sight, Dick came 
back to the highway and hurried along till he 
came to the Old Plank Road and the Big Woods. 
From here on, there were only a few negro 
cabins, and he felt secure in his ghostly array. 

Isham Baskerfield’s cabin was dark and seem¬ 
ingly deserted, but the door of the next house 
was open and from within came a bright light 
and loud voices and laughter. Peter Jim Jones 
was having a “frolic.” The guests were over¬ 
flowing on the porch, and the barking of dogs 
and the squealing of children mingled with the 
jovial voices of men and women. 

As Dick stalked down the road toward the 
cabin, a dog began to bark and then subsided into 
a whine. One of the negroes on the porch looked 
around and caught a glimpse of the white, tall 
figure. 


io6 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Wh-what’s dat?” he stammered. 

“What's what?" 

Dick took a few steps forward, clanking and 
rattling his chains, and stood still in an open 
space, revealed and concealed by the light of a 
fading young moon. His white drapery glim¬ 
mered and gleamed with pale phosphorescent 
light, and the green eyes in the ghastly old skull 
glared like a demon’s. He uttered a sepulchral 
moan. 

The negroes rushed pell-mell into the cabin, 
tumbling over one another. 

“A ha’nt! a ha’nt! a ha’nt!’’ 

Dick’s moan broke into a laugh, but that came 
to an abrupt end. For a dozen dogs ran to in¬ 
vestigate the strange appearance which, after 
all, had a human scent. Dick in his flowing 
drapery stood for a moment at a disadvantage. 
But he jerked up the sheet and gave a kick that 
sent one cur yelping away. And then he laid 
about him so vigorously with his bundle of tools 
that the dogs retreated, yelping and howling, 
while their masters crouched indoors, shaking 
with terror. 

Mightily amused and pleased with himself, 
Dick went on down the road. He passed the 
hollow where Solomon Gabe’s cabin stood, and 
came to Mine Creek. He paused to look at 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


107 

his gruesome image in the still, dark water. 
Then he turned to follow the path to the 
mine. 

As he turned, he faced a pile of logs,, the ruins 
of the old blacksmith’s hut. It was in shadow 
except for a ray of moonlight at one side. In 
that streak of moonshine, there rose, as if the 
earth had yawned and let forth a demon, a little, 
dark, bowed figure with a black, evil face. It 
was horribly contorted, the eyes wide and star¬ 
ing, the lips writhing in terror. 

For a minute Dick and the fiendlike figure 
stood silent, face to face. Then the boy stepped 
back. His foot caught on a root; he stumbled 
and, with a wild gesture and an awful clanking 
of chains, fell flat on the ground. 

A screech quivered through the air, so sudden, 
so wild and terrified that it seemed like a live, 
tormented thing. The dark form crashed 
through the bushes and was gone. 

Dick recovered himself in a minute. He 
scrambled to his feet and, clutching his drapery, 
ran up the hill toward the old mine. He 
hurriedly rid himself of his ghostly apparel, took 
out his flashlight, and threw the skull and the 
tools into the mine hole. Then, with the sheet 
bundled under his arm, he sped homeward. As he 
passed Peter Jim's cabin, he heard fervent pray- 


io8 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


ers and pious groans; the ‘frolic” had been 
turned into a prayer meeting. 

Dick smiled ruefully. “I don’t reckon they 
were much worse scared than I was/’ he said to 
himself. “What—who on earth could that have 
been ?” 


CHAPTER VII 


A T last and at last, school was out! Patsy, 
free and merry as a bird, wrote a long 
letter to Anne Lewis. 

She begged Anne to hurry and come to The 
Village. There were so many things to do! 
Camp Feed Friend was getting on famously; 
Anne would see it was better than the boys’ Camp 
Fight Foe. Happy Acres was a bower of roses; 
they would take their knitting to the summer¬ 
house every day. Anne remembered—of course 
she remembered—Dick’s dare and double dare 
about their following him and finding out what 
he was doing? They must certainly do that. He 
went off every few days, no one knew where. 
David and Steve had tried to follow him, but 
Dick led them a chase—like an old red fox, 
Cousin Mayo said—for miles and miles, and then 
back home. It was certainly a secret, and she 
and Anne must find it out. And Patsy ended as 
she began; begging Anne to hurry and come to 
The Village. 

It was such an important letter that Patsy took 
it to the post office herself to put it into Mr. Blair’s 

109 


1 io 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


own hand, feeling that would make it go more 
surely and safely than if she dropped it into the 
letter box. She had to wait awhile, for he was 
talking to Mr. Spencer who had come in just 
before her. 

“We missed you at church yesterday, Joe,” 
said Mr. Blair. “What’s the matter? You look 
seedy.” 

“It’s malaria, I reckon,” Mr. Spencer said in 
a weak, listless voice. “I stayed in bed yester¬ 
day, but I don’t feel much better to-day.” 

“You ought not to have got up,” said Mr. 
Blair. 

“I have to crawl around and do all the work I 
can. Crop’s in the grass, Will. Give me two 
plow points and half a dozen bolts; I must start 
a plow to-morrow. And I ought to be a dozen 
hoe hands at the same time.” 

“Can’t you hire hands?” 

Mr. Spencer shook his head. “I never saw 
labor so scarce and unreliable. I counted on Jeff 
to help work the crop after I put it in; now he’s 
in the army, you know.” 

“You need him mighty bad at home.” 

“Yes, but we must do without him; there’s 
where he ought to be. Well, if I can’t get hands 
to chop my cotton this week, I’ll have to plow it 
up and sow peas or something that I can raise 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET in 

without hoe work. Cotton is like tobacco, a 
'gentleman crop’ that requires waiting on; it 
won’t stand grass. My crop must be worked this 
week, or it’s lost.” 

Patsy went home, frowning to herself as she 
thought how sick and worried Mr. Spencer 
looked. At the dinner table that day, she told 
about seeing him and what he had said about his 
cotton. 

"Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Osborne. "I hope 
he can get hands. It would be a serious thing 
for him to lose his crop.” 

"I wish-” began Patsy. 

"It would be a severe personal loss,” said Mr. 
Osborne, "and these things are national calami¬ 
ties,, too; cotton is one of the sinews of war.” 

"Sinews of war? What do you mean, Uncle 
Mayo?” asked David. 

"Cotton is one of the great essentials of war,” 
explained Mr. Osborne. “Its fiber is used for 
tents and soldiers’ uniforms and airplane wings 
and automobile tires; its seed supplies food 
products; and fiber and seed are used in making 
the high explosives of modern warfare—guncot¬ 
ton, nitroglycerin, cordite. Cotton is one of the 
great essentials of war.” 

"What a lot of things it’s good for!” exclaimed 
Dick. 



112 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Patsy spoke again, and this time she did not 
say “I wish.” Instead, she said: “I know we 
could help Mr. Spencer, and the war. Mother, 
father, please let us do it. I’m sure Ruth and 
Alice and the other girls will help; and maybe the 
boys. We can work rows of cotton as well as 
rows of beans.” 

Dick laughed. “H’m! I was just thinking 
we boys might get together and help Mr. Spencer. 
But you girls!” 

“If we all help, the twenty of us, it’ll not take 
long to chop over Mr. Spencer’s cotton,” said 
David. He was more respectful of girls’ work, 
since he was seeing their flourishing garden. 

“Good!” cried Patsy, clapping her hands. 

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne. “You 
don’t mean, Patsy,—are you suggesting that you 
girls work a crop, like common field hands?” 

“They’re very uncommon nowadays,” laughed 
Patsy. “That’s why Mr. Spencer’s cotton is in 
the grass. Oh, mother dear! he’s so sick and 
miserable looking! We would love to save his 
crop, and we can, if you’ll let us. You heard 
what father said. It will be patriotic as well as 
neighborly; with Jeff in the army, too! It’ll not 
be a bit harder than gardening. Do say we may, 
mother.” 

Finally it was agreed that the young folks 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


ii3 

might undertake the task. As Patsy said, if they 
could work rows of vegetables in a garden, they 
could work rows of cotton in a field. They 
would use light hoes, and the soil was sandy and 
easy to work. But it was a big job to undertake, 
those acres and acres of cotton! 

Patsy and Dick and David went to see all the 
members of Camps Feed Friend and Fight Foe, 
to enlist them in the little army of crop savers. 
They were easily persuaded. It was harder to 
win over their parents. The Malletts and Wal- 
thalls and Joneses were unwilling to let their girls 
“do field work like niggers,” but they consented 
when they learned that Alice Blair and Ruth Wil¬ 
son and Patsy Osborne were in the party; what¬ 
ever the Blairs and Wilsons and Osbornes did 
was right and proper. 

On Tuesday morning, the volunteer workers, 
with hoes on their shoulders, presented them¬ 
selves to Mr. Spencer. 

“Why—why,” he stammered, “it’s awfully 
kind of you. But I can’t let you do it, you girls, 
you young ladies! If the boys will help chop my 
cotton, and let me pay them-” 

“Come on, Mr. Spencer, and do your talking 
while we work/’ laughed Patsy. “Come on! 
You may be our overseer and boss the job.” 

Before the morning was half over, however, 



ii4 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


they deposed him. Why, he wanted them to stop 
and rest every few minutes; at that rate, it would 
be cotton-picking time before they finished chop¬ 
ping the crop! So they elected David foreman. 

Sweet William, as water boy, trotted back and 
forth to supply cool drinks; and about the middle 
of the forenoon, he proudly invited the workers 
to a surprise luncheon, where each had half a 
dozen delicious little wild strawberries on a syca¬ 
more-leaf plate. 

At noon they rested and ate their picnic dinner 
in the grove at the spring. Evening found them 
healthily and happily tired, and they went gladly 
back to work the next day. Thursday brought 
showers that gave them a rest and made the 
freshly worked crop grow like magic. By noon 
on Saturday, they finished hoeing the cotton and, 
for the time at least, the crop was saved. 

On Saturday afternoon, the young workpeople 
loafed like real farmers; for, according to rural 
custom, that day was a sort of secular Sabbath 
on which the men of the community rested from 
all their labors and gathered sociably in the post 
office or on Courthouse Green. 

What wonderful things they had to talk about 
these days! 

Mr. Blair read the account in his daily paper 
of the Confederate Reunion at Washington and 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


ii5 

the President’s Arlington speech. The old sol¬ 
diers chuckled at hearing that foreigners, seeing 
the Stars and Bars displayed alongside the Allies’ 
flags, asked wonderingly, “What flag is that? 
What new nation has entered the war?” 
They straightened their stooped old shoulders 
at the description of their ten thousand comrades, 
in gray suits and broad hats, marching along the 
Avenue. And they said, with a sigh, that the 
story was as good—almost—as being there. 

Then they rehearsed tales of their battles and 
marches and sieges, and compared old feats with 
new. 

Those brilliant Canadian drives were like Jack¬ 
son’s charges. And like one of his messages was 
Foch’s telegram to Joffre in the battle of the 
Marne: “The enemy is attacking my flank; my 
rear is threatened; I am, therefore, attacking in 
front.” 

The heroic, hopeless, glorious Gallipoli cam 
paign—ah! it was the epitome of their War of 
Secession. As long as the world honors high 
courage and stanch devotion to a desperate cause, 
it will remember those men who., like the Franks 
in the old story of Roland, beat off army after 
army and died, defeated by their own victories, 
“triumphing over disaster and death.” 

And the trench warfare- 


116 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“They learned that from us,” chuckled old 
Captain Anderson; “and iron ships. Ah! we 
showed the world a thing- or two.” 

But never had they dreamed of trenches like 
these—stretching in long lines from the Swiss 
mountains to the Belgian coast, bent in and out 
by great attacks like the British at Neuve- 
Chapelle, the Germans at Verdun, and both sides 
in the bloody battle of the Somme. 

And there were strange, new modes of war¬ 
fare—U-boats hiding underseas, aircraft battling 
miles above the earth, tanks pushing forward 
and cutting barbed wire like twine. 

There were many things besides fighting to 
discuss. 

America was making vast and speedy prepara¬ 
tion for its part in the World War. 

Two weeks after war was declared, Congress 
without a dissenting voice voted the largest war 
credit in the history of the world. And there was 
a two-billion-dollar issue of Liberty Bonds. The 
government must be trying to gather up all the 
money in the United States, so as to have enough 
to carry on the war many years, so these country 
people said, little dreaming of the billions and bil¬ 
lions to be raised during the next two years. 

There was the draft, too, to discuss. The Se¬ 
lective Conscription Bill had passed. “They” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


117 

were having men from the ages of twenty-one 
to thirty registered, and “they” were to pick and 
choose soldiers from these registered men. It 
was wonderful how calmly this supreme asser¬ 
tion of the government’s power was accepted. 
There was a little opposition here and there— 
in the Virginia mountains, in Kansas and Ohio, 
in New York City—but all plots were promptly 
and firmly quelled. 

The Draft Act was accepted quietly by The 
Village. It had its sentimental, passionate de¬ 
votion to the past; but now that it was being 
tested, it realized the living, sacred strength of 
the ties that bound it to the Union. 

It heard, with even more horror than of things 
“over there,” of outrages at home—the German 
plot to get Mexico to declare war against the 
United States, factories blown up, railroad 
bridges destroyed, food poisoned; even here in 
Virginia, things were happening. “They” said 
loyal citizens everywhere ought to be on the look¬ 
out. 

“There’s one safe place in the world; that’s The 
Village,” said old Mr. Tavis, who was sitting on 
the post office porch with Pete Walthall and Jake 
Andrews and Mr. Smith. 

Mr. Smith shook his head and smiled. “See 
who comes there,” he said. 


118 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“It’s Black Mayo,” Mr. Tavis said in a con¬ 
strained tone. 

Somehow, no one understood how or why, 
there had grown up a feeling of constraint about 
Black Mayo whenever Mr. Smith was present. 

“He’s got a basket,” commented Jake Andrews, 
“and I bet there are pigeons in it. Yes, Mr. 
Smith, it does look foolish for a grown-up man 
to be raising birds and carrying them about and 
playing with them.” 

Dick Osborne, who came out of the post office 
just then, spoke up indignantly. “Why, Mr. An¬ 
drews! Cousin Mayo’s training those pigeons 
for war; they use them to carry messages.” 

“Shucks!” Jake laughed deridingly. 

“Well, they can fetch and carry, you know,,” 
old Mr. Tavis said mildly. “It’s in the Bible; 
Noah sent a dove out of the Ark and it came 
to him, in the evening with an olive leaf oluckt 
off.” 

“That’s all right—in the Bible,” said Jake. 
“But we’re talking ’bout our days. My daddy 
was in The War; I never heard him tell of using 
pigeons. You were in The War yourself, Mr. 
Tavis. I ask you, is you ever sent your news by 
a pigeon?” 

Mr. Tavis had to confess that he never did. 

“And Black Mayo says they can fly a thousand 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


119 

miles. Did you ever see a pigeon fly a thousand 
miles, Mr. Tavis?” 

“I never went a thousand miles myself,” Mr. 
Tavis answered. 

“I never did neither/’ said Jake; “and I don’t 
believe no pigeon ever did.” 

Black Mayo now came up the porch steps, 
greeting his neighbors cordially. 

“Hope your ‘rheumatiz’ is better, Mr. Tavis. 
Hey, Pete! Jake! How are folks at home? 
and your crops? Ah, Dick! You are the boy I 
was looking for. Here is the pigeon—a fine 
fellow he is—that I want you to take this after¬ 
noon for a three- or four-mile flight.” 

“Good! I was just starting,” said Dick. 
“What are you going to do with that other bird, 
Cousin Mayo?” 

“Pm going to send it to Richmond.” 

“To Richmond! What for?” asked Jake An¬ 
drews. 

“To be set free there and fly back here, as a 
part of its training.” 

“Cousin Mayo-” began Dick. 

But Pete Walthall interrupted. “To fly back 
here? You think it'll come all that ways?” He 
laughed incredulously. 

“A hundred miles!” It was Black Mayo’s turn 
to laugh. “He’ll make it in two or three hours. 



120 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Why,, man, I have had birds fly nine hundred 
miles, and they have been known to go eighteen 
hundred, flying over forty miles an hour.” 

“Whew!” Jake Andrews whistled his unbe¬ 
lief, and Pete Walthall stared and laughed. 

“That beats the dove i|i the Ark,” Mr. Tavis 
said doubtingly. 

Dick now got in his question. “Cousin Mayo, 
aren’t carrier pigeons useful in war?” 

“Certainly and indeed they are,” Mr. Osborne 
answered. Then, as Mr. Tavis still looked doubt¬ 
ful, he gave an instance. “At Verdun a company 
of Allied troops was cut off from the main line, 
and one man after another, who tried to go back 
for help, was shot down. At last a basket of 
pigeons was found beside a dead soldier. The 
birds were weak, almost starved; but the men, as 
a desperate last chance, started them off with 
notes fastened to their legs. Off they flew, 
through that curtain of fire no man could pass. 
The message was delivered; forces came to rescue 
the trapped soldiers—saved by those birds.” 

Pete and Jake shook their heads incredulously. 

Mr. Tavis pondered a while, and then said: 
“Well, they could carry that note just as good 
as that other dove could carry the olive leaf for 
Noah. / am going to believe it, Mr. Mayo.” 

“Of course,” said Black Mayo. “What’s the 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


121 


matter with you folks? Don’t you always believe 
what I say? And why shouldn’t you?” 

No one answered, and he went on into the post 
office, looking a little puzzled. 

Mr. Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced 
around with a disagreeable smile. “Pe-cu-li-ar 
amusement; pe-cu-li-ar statements; he himself is 
pe-cu-li-ar.” The drawled-out word was un¬ 
friendly and sinister. 

“Black Mayo is all right; all right,” old Mr. 
Tavis said emphatically. 

But Pete and Jake dropped their eyes. Black 
Mayo Osborne was a queer fellow. They had 
known him all their lives. But did they really 
know him? Why was he playing about with 
birds, like a schoolboy, while other men were 
working their corn and cotton and tobacco? They 
looked askance at him as he came out of the 
post office and went up The Street toward The 
Roost. 

He found Mrs. Osborne sitting on the porch 
with her eyes on a book propped on the railing 
and her hands busily knitting a sweater. 

“Howdy, Miranda! Where’s David?” he 
asked. 

She looked up with a start. “Oh! it’s you, 
Mayo,” she said. “David isn’t here; he’s at his 
corn acre, I suppose. But, Mayo, come in a 


122 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


minute. There’s something I want to speak to 
you about. It’s Dick,” she went on, as her cousin 
took off his broad-brimmed straw hat and settled 
himself on the porch step. 

“What about Dick?” 

She hesitated a minute. “The other young 
folks are working splendidly in their war gar¬ 
den.” 

“Yes; that was a good suggestion of Anne’s. 
The food question is serious,” said Black Mayo. 
“Did you ever know anything like the way the 
price of wheat has climbed—and soared? Flour 
is fifteen dollars a barrel, and it will go to twenty, 
if the government doesn’t get those Food Bills 
through Congress and take control. I hope it 
will be a good crop year. The young folks are 
doing a splendid work in their war gardens.” 

“And Dick not in it,” said Dick’s mother, 
frowning. “He goes off alone somewhere every 
chance he gets. We’ve never interfered with 
their little secrets; but this looks so selfish! 
We’ve thought of compelling him to help, 
but-” 

“But you’ll not. This gardening is free-will 
work.” 

“Yes.” Mrs. Osborne agreed. “And we’ve 
always taken the stand that after the children 
do their regular home work, their spare time is 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


123 

their own. But, if Dick could be persuaded, in¬ 
fluenced-” She looked hopefully at Black 

Mayo. “You can do anything with him,” she 
said. “Your word is law and gospel to all the 
Village young folks.” 

“I refuse to be flattered into coercing Dick,” 
laughed Black Mayo. “If you want him spoken 
to, my dear Miranda, speak to him yourself.” 
He leaned back against the porch post, stretched 
out his long legs, and then twisted them com¬ 
fortably together. “Speak to your own erring 
boy!” 

“I have done it,” she said. “I tried to shame 
him just now. I reminded him how David and 
Patsy and even little Sweet William are work¬ 
ing to raise food for the hungry, suffering world. 
I told him about the Richmond Boy Scouts who 
are going on farms, to save the potato crop.” 

“And he refused to be shamed?” 

“He cocked up his head, with that superior, 
self-satisfied air—oh, big as he is, I want to slap 
him when he does that!—and said, Tt’s a nice 
little thing David and Patsy and the others are 
doing—the best they can, I reckon. But I’d 
rather do a big thing; something to get a lot of 
money, enough to buy a whole Liberty Bond at 
a whop/ And before I could get my wits to¬ 
gether to answer that amazing foolishness, he 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


124 

said he’d finished his tasks, hoed the beans, and 
brought in stove wood, and couldn’t he go. And 
off he went. What would you do, Mayo?” 

“I think I’d do nothing, Miranda,” her cousin 
replied. “A boy^s got to have his adventures. 
And Dick’s a fellow That can stand a lot of let¬ 
ting alone. If he’s on the wrong track, he’s got 
sense enough to find it out and get on the right 
one. Don’t worry, Miranda. Will you tell 
David he can get one of my plows any day he 
wants it? And don’t you worry about Dick, 
Miranda,” he repeated, untwining his long legs 
and getting up. 

As he started down the walk, Mrs. Osborne put 
aside her work and went out to the kitchen, a one- 
roomed cabin behind the Roost dwelling-rooms, 
to speak to Emma. 

The old woman was standing at the door, look¬ 
ing worried and grum. 

“Why, Emma, you haven’t kindled your fire!” 
Mrs. Osborne exclaimed. 

Emma started. “Naw’m. My shoe sole was 
floppin’. I had to go to de shop to git it sewed 
on.” 

“De shop” was a shed on The Back Way where 
shoes were cobbled by Lincum Gabe, old Solomon 
Gabe’s son. 

“I’m gwine to start de fire now.” Emma’s 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 125 

voice was mournful, and as she rattled the stove 
lids, she shook her head and sighed dolefully. 

“Is anything the matter? Are you sick?” Mrs. 
Osborne asked anxiously. 

“Naw’m,, I ain’t sick, Miss M’randa. I don’t 
reckon I is. I ain’t got no out’ard pains. I’m 
just thinkin’ ’bout my boy, an’ wonderin’ who’ll 

git him-” She went off into a confused 

mumble. Suddenly she turned to her mistress 
and said earnestly: “If dey take de colored folks 
back in slavery, I’ll belong to you; won’t I, Miss 
M’randa? Like my folks always did to yore 
folks?” 

“What nonsense are you talking, Emma?” 
Mrs. Osborne asked sharply. “No one could 
put you back in slavery. No one wants to. We 
hate and abhor it more than you do. Why, we 
wouldn’t have you back in slavery for anything in 
the world. What put such a silly notion in your 
head?” 

“I ain’t faultin’ you ’bout it, Miss M’randa. 
It’s dem folks off yander,” said Emma, vaguely. 
“Dey done started it. Dey done numbered de 
young bucks an’ dey’re goin’ to nomernate ’em 
to be slaves. Dey’re just waitin’ for de orders. 
My boy Tom is one of ’em.” 

Patsy, who had followed her mother, laughed 
and exclaimed: “Why Aunt Emma! They num- 



126 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

bered all the men, white and colored, from 
twenty-one to thirty years old, and they are going 
to select soldiers from them, to go and fight the 
Germans. ,, 

“Emma, some dne has told you a lie, a wicked, 
silly lie/’ said Mrs. Osborne. “There isn’t a 
word of truth in it. As Patsy says, the white 
boys are going, too. Why, some of them have 
gone—Fayett Mallett and Jeff Spencer and Will 
Eppes—boys that you know, and lots of others. 
They need a great many soldiers, and they are 
going to select them from that draft list.” 

“Dey say as how dem white ones was took to 
be offiseers, an’ boss de colored ones till dey git 
’em handcuffed an’ back in slavery,” said Emma, 
lowering her voice and glancing fearfully around 
as if she were betraying secrets of state. 

Mrs. Osborne laughed. “How silly! Who are 
'they’ that say such foolish things?” 

“Uh, it’s jest bein’ talked ’round,” Emma an¬ 
swered evasively. 

“It sounds like propaganda,” said Mrs. Os¬ 
borne, wrinkling her brow. 

“Naw’m, ’tain’t no sort o’ gander. It’s just 
talk dat’s goin’ ’round. You-all want some 
seconds batter-cakes, you say, honey?” 

And Emma went bustling about her work, deaf 
to all further questions. 


CHAPTER VIII 


C OME on, Sweet William! Sweet Wil¬ 
liam!” sang Patsy, catching her small 
brother by the hand and dancing down 
the walk. “Let's go to Broad Acres for a look 
around. Alice! uh, Alice!” She called Alice 
Blair, who was sitting in the swing, with her 
knitting. “Come and see how our gardens are 
growing. We've been so busy being field hands 
for Mr. Spencer's cotton, I've not been to our 
garden for two whole days.” 

“I ran by to look at it this morning,” said 
Alice. “I feel real lonesome if I don't see it 
every day.” 

“So do I,” agreed Patsy. “I know now how 
David felt that first year he had corn at Happy 
Acres, and he used to ‘go by’ to see it every time 
he was sent to the store for the mail or a spool of 
thread.” 

At the garden gate they paused and called 
Ruth. She came out on the back porch, but 
stopped at the head of the steps. 

“I've j-just come in,” she said. “I weeded a 
row of p-peas. Now I’m helping mother. I'll 
see you p-p-presently.” 


127 


128 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


The others went into the garden, admired 
the flourishing vegetables, and pulled up a few 
stray weeds. 

“Isn’t it beautorious ?” exclaimed Patsy. 
“Things have just been leaping and bounding 
along these two days.” 

“Scrumptious!” agreed Alice. 

“We-all boys have got the biggest potatoes,” 
said Sweet William, wagging his head proudly. 

“You-all boys! Will you look at those beans? 
What about them, Mr. William Taliaferro Os¬ 
borne?” demanded Patsy. “Anne Lewis had a 
lot to say about their Washington gardens. They 
aren’t a bit better than this; they can’t be. Just 
think! Anne is coming next week.” 

“Goody, goody, goody!” cried Sweet William, 
clapping his hands. 

As they went chattering back up the walk, Ruth 
came out to ask them to stay to supper; her 
mother had a strawberry shortcake. 

“I’ll go and ask-” “If mother knew-” 

began Patsy and Alice. 

“If I had a piece of strawberry shortcake in 
my hand,” suggested Sweet William, “I could 
go home and tell them you were invited. We are 
going to have batter-cakes for supper; Emma 
makes good little batter-cakes with lacy brown 
edges.” 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


129 

Patsy was properly horrified at her small 
brother’s greediness, but Mrs. Wilson laughed 
and sent him home, munching a generous slice 
of shortcake. 

After supper Mrs. Wilson and the girls went 
out on the front porch. It was wide and long, 
set high on brick pillars, with a flight of steps 
leading down to the long boxwood-bordered 
walk. 

“There is a loose railing,” said Mrs. Wilson. 
“I must nail it in place to-morrow.” 

“You are as careful about mending and tend¬ 
ing Broad Acres as you are about Ruth’s darn¬ 
ing and patching,” laughed Patsy. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilson. “It’s all in the 
family. Broad Acres is a dear old part of the 
family.” 

“How old is it, Cousin Agnes?” 

“The house was built in 1762,” said Mrs. Wil¬ 
son, with quiet pride. “It was made strong, to 
be a fort, in case of Indian attacks. That is why 
the shutters are so thick, with the little hinged 
middle pieces for loopholes to fire from.” 

“The Yankees came by here in The War,” said 
Ruth. 

“In April, ’65,” agreed her mother. “The 
doors and shutters were closed, with crape hang¬ 
ing from them, in mourning for the dead Con- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


130 

federacy. Sherman’s men marched past, with¬ 
out disturbing the house, thinking there was a 
corpse in it.” 

“This very bench we’re s-s-sitting on is c-called 
the President’s bench, because W-W-Washing- 
ton sat here when he was v-visiting my way- 
back-grandfather. Tell about that, mother,” 
said Ruth. 

But an interruption came before Mrs. Wilson 
could begin the story, the more loved because it 
was old and well known. The front gate clicked. 
Patsy glanced toward it and, seeing a negro girl 
standing there, exclaimed in surprise, “Why, 
there’s Lou Ellen!” 

“Go to the side gate, Lou Ellen,” Mrs. Wilson 
said sharply. “What do you mean by coming the 
front way?” 

“I ain’t cornin’ in,” said Lou Ellen, in a pert, 
high voice, as she lounged on the gate. “I jest 
come to de store an’ stopped to leave you a mes¬ 
sage, Miss Agnes. I was cornin’ down de mill 
path an’ a man—I reckon he was Van—hollered 
to me an’ said Mr. Black Mayo say for you 
please’m to go an’ spen’ de night wid Miss Polly. 
He got to go ’way an’ she was feelin’ sort o’ 
puny, an’ he didn’t want to left her at home by 
herse’f.” 

“It’s strange he didn’t tell me when he was in 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


131 

The Village to-day,” said Mrs. Wilson. “Van 
told you, you say?” 

“It sounded like Van,” answered Lou Ellen. 
“He was in de woods an’ I didn’t see him good.” 

She tossed her head and strolled away. 

“She’s a horrid thing!” said Ruth. 

“How could she help it?” asked Alice. “Her 
mother, Louviny, is as trifling as she can be, and 
so is her father, Lincum; and his father is 
that horrid old Solomon Gabe that they call a 
trick doctor; all the other darkies are afraid of 
him.” 

“Darkies are queer things,” laughed Patsy. 
And then she told what Emma had said about the 
draft. 

“She isn’t the only one who believes that,” said 
Alice. “Unc’ Isham told father he’d heard tell 
they are all going to be put back in slavery; he 
said they always told him if the Democrats got 
strong in power, they would make the darkies 
slaves again.” 

“I wonder how they get these foolish notions 
into their heads?” said Mrs. Wilson. “Well, 
chickens, Ruth and I must be starting to Lark- 
land.” 

“Let Ruth spend the night with me, Cousin 
Agnes,” entreated Patsy. 

Mrs. Wilson consented, and the three girls 


132 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

walked with her as far as the mill on her way 
to Larkland. Sweet William did not see them 
go, and he was surprised to find the house dark 
and deserted when he came running back, with 
Scalawag at his heels, for his sweater. He went, 
with a little feeling of awe, down the somber 
boxwood walk—it was now nearly dark—and it 
was a relief to hear Scalawag, who had run ahead 
of him, give a sharp bark. 

“Cats-s! cats-s!” hissed Sweet William 
urgingly. 

Scalawag ran to a rose arbor at the back of 
the garden, but his furious barking changed 
to a sudden yelp and whine; he ran back to his 
master. 

“Old tabby cat must have scratched you,” said 
Sweet William. “Sic her! sic her, Scalawag!” 

But the dog, bristling and growling, kept at his 
master’s heels, as if unwilling to encounter again 
whatever he had found in that dark, secluded 
place. Sweet William groped around for his 
sweater and ran home. Then he had his bath 
and went to bed. The older children followed 
soon, as behooved those who must be at Sunday 
school at half past nine o’clock and know a Psalm 
and the story of Gideon and be ready to answer 
seven new questions in the Shorter Catechism. 

The next morning, when the Osbornes were 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


133 

at breakfast, Steve came running into the room, 
with a tragic face. 

“Our gardens are ruined!” he cried. 

“Oh, Steve! What do you mean?” 

“Ruined?” 

“They can’t be!” 

“Ruined!” he repeated, with doleful emphasis. 
“I went by there, just after breakfast, taking our 
cow to pasture. I saw the gate open-” 

“Who left it open?” demanded David. 

“And Miss Fanny Morrison’s old cow was 
there, gorging herself on our corn and peas. 
Everything is grazed off; trampled down.” 

With no more appetites for breakfast, the war 
gardeners ran to Broad Acres, to see the wreck 
of their gardens. 

“But who left the gate open?” David demanded 
sternly. 

“We were the last ones here,,” said Patsy; “and 
I know we shut it.” 

“I was here about dark,” Sweet William con¬ 
fessed bravely; “I came for my sweater. But 
I shut the gate and I fastened it. I had to climb 
up on the garden fence to put the hook in 
the hole.” 

“You didn’t put it in,” Patsy said severely. 
“You let it slip to the side. And our gardens 
are ruined.” 


134 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

"It’s my garden, too. And I did fasten the 
gate/’ sobbed Sweet William. 

He seemed sp clearly the culprit that black 
looks and little pity were being given him when 
Mrs. Wilson came up. 

She, too, was horrified and distressed, but she 
said: “If Sweet William is sure he fastened the 
gate, I am sure he fastened it. There is some¬ 
thing strange about this matter. Mayo did not 
send for me. He is away, but Polly had told him 
she would have Chrissy sleep in the house. She 
was surprised—but of 'course pleased—to see 
me; I would have come back home, if it hadn’t 
been so late.” 

“Could Lou Ellen have done it?” suggested 
Patsy. “She came with that message; and she’s 
so pert and horrid.” 

They examined the premises carefully. Near 
the rose arbor, at the back of the garden, they 
found footprints, the track of a big, bare, flat 
foot. Dick carefully made a copy of it on a piece 
of paper, and Mr. Blair and Mr. Red Mayo Os¬ 
borne went with the gardeners to Lincum’s cabin 
on the Redville road, and confronted Lou Ellen. 
She stoutly denied the charge, and when her foot 
was measured it proved to be much smaller than 
the print. Evidently, then, she was not the in¬ 
truder. Who could it be? 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 135 

That was a doleful Sabbath for the young vil¬ 
lagers. They were thinking more about their 
wrecked garden than their Sunday school lesson; 
the sermon fell on deaf ears; and in the afternoon 
they stood mournfully around the scene of their 
destroyed hopes. 

But with the next morning came cheer and 
good counsel. Black Mayo, having come back 
on an early train, stopped at the post office and 
was told about the catastrophe and he went to 
view the garden. 

“It is pretty bad, but it might be worse,” he 
said cheerily. “Some of these things will come 
up from the roots. Some of the rows will have 
to be plowed up and planted in things that will 
still have plenty of growing time. The soil is 
in fine condition. Let’s get to work and make a 
garden day of it. One of you boys go to Lark- 
land, and get Rosinante and a plow/’ 

Mr. Tavis came to help them, and so did Mr. 
Blair, who shut up the post office, saying casually 
that any one who came for mail could look him 
up or wait till he got back. 

Several hours of diligent, intelligent toil 
worked wonders. The gardens would be later, 
of course, but with a long growing season before 
them that was no serious disadvantage; it would 
require more work, much more work, but that 


136 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

they were all willing and glad to give. Why, 
Dick had offered to help this morning, and he had 
been just as interested and busy as any one else. 
Perhaps he would join the garden club now. But 
he did not. When Mr. Osborne went home to 
dinner, Dick started off with him, to get a pigeon 
for a trial flight. 

Patsy looked after him and set her lips firmly. 
“Just you wait, young man,” she promised him, 
“till next week when Anne Lewis comes. We’ll 
show you what it means to dare and double dare 
us.” 

For weeks Dick had been going off alone every 
few days, and coming back late, tired and dirty 
and with a joyful air of mystery. The others 
were too busy with gardening and Red Cross 
and Corn Club work to make any real effort to 
find out where he went. 

But he always watched to make sure that he 
was not followed, and he never relaxed his pre¬ 
cautions at the mine. He pulled his ladder in and 
out, blurred his footprints, and stirred up the 
dead leaves so as not to make a path. It would 
take, he proudly thought, a Sherlock Holmes or 
a bloodhound to trace his course. 

He had examined the main room without see¬ 
ing any place that it seemed worth while to work 
in the crude fashion possible to him. The most 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 137 

promising places, he thought, were in the spurs 
of the lower tunnel, where there was more clay 
than rock. If he dug a little farther—a few 
inches or some feet—perhaps he would find silver 
that the miners had missed. 

He planned to extend each spur a certain dis¬ 
tance; at first he said ten feet, but a little work 
convinced him that was too far, so he decided to 
go six feet—or five—or four. It was too dis¬ 
couraging to compute how long it would take to 
go even four feet, at his snail-like rate of prog¬ 
ress. He could not use alone the drill and sledge 
hammer he had brought from Mr. Mallett’s shop. 
So he had to content himself with digging along 
a ledge, breaking off rough bits of rock and 
eagerly examining them for silver. 

He had inquired furtively about dynamite, but 
the law made it difficult for him to get it—for¬ 
tunately; for in his ignorant, inexperienced 
hands there would probably have been an acci¬ 
dent which might even have cost him his life. 

On this pleasant June afternoon, Dick went 
blithely with his Cousin Mayo to Larkland. He 
nearly always went there on his way to the Old 
Sterling Mine; it was only half a mile off the 
road; and the distance to the mine seemed shorter 
to him when he had a carrier pigeon for 
company. 


138 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Breeding and blood were telling in the Lark- 
land pigeons. Mr. Osborne showed Dick that 
afternoon .^marked copy of The Bird World 
telling, with big headlines, about the thousand- 
mile flight of a young pigeon trained by Mr. 
Mayo Osborne, of Virginia. 

“I bet Snapshot will make a record, too,” said 
Dick, stroking the plumage of a petted young 
bird. 

‘‘Dick,” said Mr. Osborne, suddenly, “I’m glad 
to have your help and interest about these birds; 
I want you to learn all you can about training 
them. Your Cousin Polly knows all there is to 
know about their feeding and care. But when I 
go away-” 

“Oh! you are going away?” interrupted Dick. 
“When, Cousin Mayo?” 

“Early this fall, I hope; as soon as some busi¬ 
ness matters can be arranged. Eve been wanting 
to be in the army from the first.” 

“I said you would go. It wasn’t true you 
wanted to stay at home playing with birds.” 

Mr. Osborne looked at Dick and started to ask 
a question, but it did not seem worth while. So 
he merely said: “When I leave, I’m going to ask 
your father to let you stay here at Larkland with 
your Cousin Polly and help her with the doves, 
our doves of war.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


139 

“Thank you, Cousin Mayo; I’ll do my best,” 
promised Dick. 

Mr. Osborne wrote a note and fastened it to 
the bird’s leg—that was always part of the cere¬ 
mony; then he put it into a makeshift cage, an 
old shoe box with holes punched in it, and gave 
it to Dick. 

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Osborne. 

“To the mine—creek,” said Dick, almost tell¬ 
ing his secret. It was hard not to give a forth¬ 
right answer to his cousin’s direct look. 

“Why don’t you boys—do you?—ever go to 
the Old Sterling Mine?” 

“Maybe so. Sometimes,” he mumbled. 

Black Mayo did not notice the boy’s conscious 
air. He was watching his pigeons fluttering 
and circling about, white against the woodland, 
dark against the shining sky. 

“I used to go there;” he said. “Ah! the hours 
and days I spent, seeking its treasure. It was 
one of the great adventures of my boyhood.” 

“Did you ever find any?—any silver in the 
mine, I mean,” Dick asked eagerly. 

His cousin gave a smiling negative. 

“Do you suppose?—perhaps there isn’t any.” 
Dick’s voice dropped in disappointment. 

“I believe there is,” said Black Mayo. “Silver 
was found there by old Mallett, not long after the 


140 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Revolution. You’ve heard the tale handed down 
in his family. Some years ago, when I was rum¬ 
maging through old court records, I found the 
account of his trial for ‘feloniously making, 
uttering, and passing false and counterfeited 
Coin in the likeness and similitude of Spanish 
milled Dollars of the value of six shillings Cur¬ 
rent money of Virginia/ That was in 1792.” 

“But the mine was worked after that, wasn’t 
it?” asked Dick. 

“Oh, yes! My grandfather Mayo, your great¬ 
grandfather, had it worked, but it never paid. It 
doesn’t seem reasonable that the old blacksmith 
spaded out all the silver that was there. There’s 
a tale that a valuable vein was struck and lost. 
You might take a look around to-day,, and you 
and I might go prospecting some time,” he said, 
now looking keenly at Dick. 

The boy reddened to the roots of his hair. 
“Yes, sir,” he said. “It’s time I was gone.” 

Mayo Osborne looked after him with a whim¬ 
sical smile. “Straight to the Old Sterling Mine, 
I’ll wager my head!” he laughed. 


CHAPTER IX 


A NNE LEWIS had come, and that was a 
jubilee for her and her Village cousins. 
' She and Patsy and Alice and Ruth 
wanted to go to every place at once and to tell in 
one breath everything that had happened since 
they had parted in the spring. 

There was Happy Acres to be visited, and its 
budding and blossoming beauty to be welcomed. 
There was the mill, Larkland mill that was 
loved almost as dearly as the miller, Mr. Giles 
Spotswood. There were all the cousins at Lark- 
land, Broad Acres, and The Roost. And there 
was the dear outside host, Tavises and Morri¬ 
sons and Walthalls, and the old servants and their 
families, for whom Anne had gifts and greetings. 
The girls made a round of visits, with their 
tongues going like bell clappers. 

“And haven’t you found out yet where Dick is 
going—not yet?” Anne asked Patsy, privately. 
“Oh, I’m so glad! It’ll be so much fun to follow 
him up!” 

“If we can. We’ll certainly do it, if we can,” 
said Patsy, with less assurance. “Anne, even 
Dick has never kept a secret like this.” 


142 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“I don’t see why you haven’t found out, in all 
these weeks,’' said Anne; “though I’m glad you 
haven’t, so we can do it together.” 

“Dick isn’t so easy to catch up with,” an¬ 
swered Patsy. “And then there are our gardens. 
The boys won’t stop working for fear we’ll get 
ahead of them, and we won’t stop for fear they’ll 
get ahead of us. No one has time—and time it 
would take!—to follow Dick.” 

“You must win out in the gardening; we must 
certainly beat those boys,,” said Anne. “I’m so 
glad I’m here to help.” 

They were on their way now to inspect Camp 
Feed Friend and Camp Fight Foe, that were 
thriving wonderfully after being replanted and 
reworked ten days before. Black Mayo said 
Jack’s famous beanstalk must surely have grown 
in the deep, fertile soil of Broad Acres garden; 
no other place could produce such magic results. 

Patsy and Anne found most of the war gar¬ 
deners already at Broad Acres, at work. Black 
Mayo had lent them Rosinante, and David was 
plowing while the others were weeding and hoe¬ 
ing the rows of vegetables. Anne and Patsy set 
to work, side by side. 

“Don’t you think our garden is the better?” 
Patsy asked for the dozenth time. 

And for the dozenth time, Anne—partial 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


H3 

judge!—answered emphatically: “I certainly do. 
Your potatoes are taller than theirs. And your 
peas are better; I’ve counted the pods on the 
biggest vines in both gardens. It’s just splendid 
what you’ve done—all but Dick.’’ 

“Oh!—Dick.” Whatever Patsy herself might 
say about Dick, she could never bear to have 
others find fault with her twin brother. “He 
helps Cousin Agnes in her garden. He would 
work here sometimes—real often—but the boys 
call him 'slacker’ because he won’t join them. 
He’s working hard over his secret, whatever it 
is. He comes home so dirty! And—well, Anne, 
I know it’s something big, from the way he acts.” 

“We’ll find out what it is,” Anne said con¬ 
fidently. 

“I hope so,” sighed Patsy. 

“But now,,” said Anne, “this garden is the 
most important thing. Oh! it’s awful to think of 
all those people with nothing to eat except what 
we send them across these thousands of miles of 
ocean.” 

“We’ve been saving our flour and sugar for a 
long, long time; looks like they might have 
enough to eat now,” Sweet William said, frown¬ 
ing. “Oh! I did want them all to have enough, 
and leave me sugar for a birthday cake. It’s such 
a so-long time since I’ve seen a real cake!” He 


144 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

sighed. “I don’t reckon we’ll ever have another 
one; not till I get old as Miss Fanny Morrison 
and don’t have any birthdays.” 

“Father says conditions are terrible along the 
Hindenburg Line,” said Alice. “Cousin Mayo, 
what is the Hindenburg Line?” she asked her 
cousin who,, having finished some errands in The 
Village, was waiting to take Rosinante home. 

He explained. “The first of this year, the Ger¬ 
mans realized that they could not repel Allied 
attacks in the position they then held. So in 
March they drew back and entrenched them¬ 
selves in northern France in a position as strong 
as the nature of the country and their science 
could make it; that is their ‘impregnable Hin¬ 
denburg Line.’ The Allies began, with the battle 
of the Aisne in April, the attacks they will con¬ 
tinue till that great Hindenburg Line is smashed. 

“Well! The Huns laid waste the country that 
they left; robbed and burned homes and villages 
in that rich farming country, and kidnapped men 
and women and children and set them to work in 
Germany. And they left behind wrecks of people 
in wrecks of homes, many of them little fellows 
like Sweet William here, half starved and 
crippled and shell-shocked.” 

Anne put a comforting arm around Sweet Wil¬ 
liam. “Don’t cry, dear,” she said. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


H5 

He stiffened his lips bravely. “I—Fm not 
crying,” he announced. “I—I think I caught a 
cold. Fve got a frog in my throat. I wish I 
could find a lot of potato bugs! I want to work 
hard to help all those poor people.” 

He set to work very diligently, but presently 
David called out: “You Bill! You’re wearing out 
those potato plants, looking for the bugs you 
caught yesterday. And every row I plow, you’re 
in my way.” 

“I isn’t not moved since I got out your way the 
other time you told me to,” complained Sweet 
William., stumbling over a furrow. 

“Well, get out of the patch and stay out till I 
finish this plowing, if you please,” said David, 
who was warm and tired and getting cross. 

The little fellow turned away with injured 
dignity and went into the back yard. He sat on 
the porch steps for a while, then he began rum¬ 
maging around. Presently he came back into 
the garden, with his arms full of little sticks,, 
and busied himself in a corner where the war 
gardeners had a bed of radishes for work-day 
refreshment. 

“What are you doing now?” Anne stopped to 
ask. 

“Playing this is my garden. I’m building a 
fence ’round it,” explained Sweet William. 


146 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Phew! What a* horrid smell! It smells like— 
why, I smell kerosene oil,” said Anne, sniffing 
and frowning. 

“I reckon it’s these little sticks,” he said. 
“They’re all smelly.” 

“Where did you get them?” asked Anne. 

“From under the back-porch steps.” 

“That’s queer!” said Anne. “I wonder-” 

“Come on, Anne, and let’s start our next rows 
at the same time, so we can race—and talk,”* 
called Patsy. 

Anne went her way and forgot the little sticks 
that smelled of oil. 

Sweet William put them aside presently and 
had a party—filling some oyster shells with make- 
believe dainties and setting them out on a flat 
stone. 

Mrs. Mallett, who came to consult Mrs. Wilson 
about some Red Cross work, paused to watch the 
youngster who was the Village pet. 

“You are having a fine party, ain’t you?” she 
said. 

“It’s a birthday party,” he said. “But I’m just 
having ash-cake. I reckon Mr. Hoover wouldn’t 
want me to have fruit cake and pie. Mother says 
he wants us to save everything we can, so as to 
feed our armies and our Allies.” 

“Bless your heart!” she said. “I wish the 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


147 

grown folks ’round here would act that way. 
You know,” she said, turning to Mrs. Wilson, 
“those Andrewses and Joneses and Walthalls 
aren’t making a mite of change in the way they 
eat, for all the government tells them 'food will 
win the war’ and 'if we waste at home, our boys 
over there will go hungry.’ ” 

“I know. Food has become sacred; it means 
life,” said Mrs. Wilson. “It is dreadful that 
some of our own people are so slow to realize 
the situation and their duty. Miranda Osborne 
and I carried the government pamphlets to the 
i\ndrewses and Joneses and Walthalls and talked 
to them, but they listened as if their minds were 
shut and locked. They think, as Gordan Jones 
said, those who raise wheat and corn and hogs 
have a right to use all the flour and meal and 
meat they please.” 

“A right! Who with a heart and conscience 
wants the right to use victuals extravagant when 
other folks are starving? Well, I must go and 
take this wool to the women that said they would 
knit.” 

“I’ll go with you,” said Sweet William, 
scrambling to his feet. “I’d rather go visiting 
with you than to stay here and play party by 
myself.” 

Mrs. Mallett gladly accepted his company, and, 


148 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

with Scalawag at his heels, he trotted along with 
her, to collect knitted garments and dispense 
wool. 

Suddenly Scalawag, usually a well-mannered 
dog that did not interfere with people on the 
public road, ran at a negro boy, barking furiously. 
The boy jerked up a stone, and Scalawag came 
back to Sweet William’s heels, whimpering and 
growling. As soon as they were at a safe dis¬ 
tance, he again barked angrily. 

“I never saw him do that way before,” said 
Sweet William; “never, but that night in the 
garden.” 

“Who was he barking at then?” asked Mrs. 
Mallett. 

“I don’t know,,” said Scalawag’s master; and 
then he told about his trip to Broad Acres the 
night before the gardens were destroyed and 
about the dog’s queer behavior. 

“H’m!” Mrs. Mallett said thoughtfully. “Who 
was that boy we passed?” 

“Kit, Lincum Gabe’s boy,” said Sweet Wil¬ 
liam. “Scalawag’s met him a hundred times, I 
reckon, and never noticed him before.” 

“H’m!” Mrs. Mallett repeated. “Sweet Wil¬ 
liam, you tell Mr. Black Mayo how this dog acted 
to-day, and about that night. Some dogs have 
got a lot of sense, and some are pure fools; they’re 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


149 

just like folks. Well, here's a place we’ve got to 
stop,” she said, frowning at the pea-green gabled 
and turreted house that was the outward and 
visible sign of Gordan Jones’s prosperity. 

The door was wide open, and in response to 
Mrs. Mallett’s knock there was a hearty “Come 
in!” She and Sweet William walked through the 
hall and turned into the dining room where Mr. 
and Mrs. Jones were sitting at the dinner table. 

“O—oh!” Sweet William stared at the table. 
It was strangely unlike what he was used to at 
home these days. Why, it was loaded with food, 
vegetables swimming in sauces and gravies, two 
or three kinds of meat, hot biscuits, cakes, and 
pies. “O-o-oh!” he said again. 

“Howdy, folks!” called Mr. Jones, a stout man 
in shirt sleeves. “Come in, come in, you-all, and 
set down to dinner.” 

“Howdy, Mrs. Mallett,” said Mrs. Jones, get¬ 
ting up to greet the guests. “And howdy, little 
man. It’s Mr. Red Mayo’s little boy, ain’t it?” 

“Yes; it’s William, Sweet William Osborne,” 
said Mrs. Mallett, stiffly. “I just come to bring 
you the wool you said-” 

“Here, here!” interrupted Mr. Jones’s big 
voice. “Eat first and then do your talking. 
We’ve got plenty victuals for you.” He laughed 
and surveyed the table with pride. “Come and 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


150 

eat with us, Mrs. Mallett. Come on, little boy, 
and set right here by me.” 

“Oh, the little French and Belgians!” ex¬ 
claimed Sweet William, whose eyes had never 
moved from the table. 

“No, thank you, Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Mallett, 
drawing her lips into a tight line. “Now, Mrs. 
Jones,, this wool-” 

“Aw, come along and set and eat,” urged Mr. 
Jones, hospitably. “I want you to sample this 
old home-cured ham; and that’s prime good bacon 
with the greens.” 

The little woman’s face flushed and her eyes 
snapped. “Mr. Jones,” she said, “them victuals 
would choke me.” 

“Wh-what?” He gazed at her with blank as¬ 
tonishment. 

“I can’t set down to a gorge like that,” she 
said. “I’d be thinking ’bout them hungry mouths 
over there.” 

“Starving Belgians and French,” interjected 
Sweet William. 

Mrs. Mallett hurried on: “Yes, them and our 
other Allies; they’ve got no time to raise wheat 
and such; their farmers are fighting their war 
and ours,, and the women are working in muni¬ 
tion factories and taking the men’s places at 
home. And there are our boys—my boy—going 



THE OLD MINE'S SECRET 


151 

over there, depending on us at home to send them 
food. If we are lazy and selfish and don’t raise 
it, or if we are greedy and selfish and use it 
wasteful and extravagant, what's to become of 
them?” 

“Why, why”—Mr. Jones was bewildered—“I 
raised all that’s on this table, ’cept a little sugar 
and such, that if I didn’t buy somebody else 
would. I always was a good provider; we’re used 
to a good table,, and nobody's got a right to ask me 
to live stinting,” he said, with rising anger. 

“They’ve got a right to ask me to give my son, 
my own flesh and blood,” said Mrs. Mallett, with 
a fire of righteous wrath that paled Mr. Jones’s 
flicker of temper. “And yet you think they 
haven’t got a right to ask you to give up your hot 
biscuits and meat three times a day! S’pose you 
are used to being a good provider? Ain’t I used 
to going to bed easy in mind about my boy Fayett 
—and any day I may hear he’s dead.” 

“They oughtn’t to have sent him, your boy,” 
mumbled Mr. Jones. “They’ve got no business to 
send our men over there to fight, and maybe-” 

“They've got all the right to send him to fight 
for his country. But Fayett didn't wait for any 
draft. He went of his free will—I’m glad and 
proud of it—to fight for liberty. And if he dies, 
I want it to be the Germans that kill him. I don’t 



152 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

want you, that have known him since he was a 
curly-headed baby boy, to be the ones to help 
kill him.” 

“Why, Mrs. Mallett!” Mrs. Jones said in a 
hurt, amazed voice. “We wouldn’t harm a hair 
of his head; not for the world, we wouldn’t.” 

“I’d do anything I could to bring him back 
safe home,” said Mr. Jones. 

“That’s what you say,” the little woman cried 
passionately. “But words don’t count. And you 
are doing your part to starve him. They can’t 
get food over there, unless we send it to them. 
It’s being rationed out to folks in France and 
Italy. The English ships that used to go to South 
America to get wheat are busy taking over our 
soldiers and munitions and food, food, food. And 
there’s just so-o much and all the world to feed— 
the world and my soldier boy. If we use it waste¬ 
ful, there won’t be any to send. Yes, sir! I say 
your good dinner would choke me. I’d feel I 
was helping to kill my own son. You may not 
mean it, but it’s true that every time you set down 
to a meal like this you are helping kill my son, 
beat our armies, make the Germans win.” 

“I don’t want your cake, your pie,” sobbed 
Sweet William. “I’m hungry, but I—I want to 
be hungry.” 

Mrs. Jones pushed back her plate and sobbed 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 153 

with him. “I can't swallow a morsel," she de¬ 
clared. “I can just see Fayett, like when he was 
a little boy playing with my Tommy"—her own 
son who was dead—“when they’d come in and 
say, 'We’re hungry; give us a snack!’ I ain’t 
never said 'no’ to them." She buried her tear^ 
wet face in her apron. 

Mr. Jones winked hard and cleared his throat 
loudly. “Come, come, mother,” he said. “Don’t 
you cry. We hadn’t thought ’bout things like she 
put ’em. I reckon you are right, Mrs. Mallett. 
Yes, you are! A man that won’t work at home 
for them that’s fighting over there for him ain’t 
much of a man. The world to feed—and Fayett! 
I’ll double the crop of wheat I was going to put 
in, and I’ll—say, Mrs. Mallett, if you won’t take 
a feed with me, won’t you and the little boy set 
and have a bite?" 

“That I will, thank you," said Mrs. Mallett, 
smiling through tears. “I didn’t mean to fault 
you too rough, Mr. Jones. But when I think 
’bout them things, it’s like I had a pot in me that 
was boiling over." 

“That’s all right," answered Mr. Jones. “You 
put it strong to me; and we’ll put it strong to 
other folks. We must see Jake Andrews and 
Pete Walthall, and make ’em know what they’ve 
got to do. We won’t have men here in our neigh- 


154 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

borhood that are so low-down and greedy and 
selfish they won’t do their part. We’ll see to 
them! What’ll you have, Mrs. Mallett? some 
corn bread and greens and a bit of bacon ? Folks 
have got to eat, you know,, so they can work. Um, 
urn! What’ll I do ’bout my hounds?” 

“Come now, Willie, you’ll have a cake and a 
piece of pie, being as they’re here and got to be 
et,” said Mrs. Jones, bustling about to get plates 
and chairs. 

Sweet William gravely and wistfully con¬ 
sidered the matter. “We don’t have cakes at 
home,” he said. “But these cakes are already 
made—with icing tops and raisins! I reckon it 
won’t hurt for me to eat one—maybe two, to save 
them. The little Belgians couldn’t get this sugar 
anyway.” He sighed, not altogether sad, and 
fell to with a will. 


CHAPTER X 


T HE war gardeners went home at noon, 
but they came back late in the after¬ 
noon. When they finished the tasks they 
had set themselves, Mrs. Wilson suggested that 
they take eggs and radishes and lettuce, and meal 
to make ash-cakes, and have a picnic supper at 
Happy Acres; they might find some berries to 
add to the feast, and the boys were always hoping 
to catch fish in Tinkling Water, though they sel¬ 
dom did. 

The plan was welcomed with enthusiasm, and 
they had a merry time and came home in the twi¬ 
light. Anne, who was to spend the night at 
Broad Acres, sat on the porch with Mrs. Wilson 
and Ruth, knitting and talking. 

“Wasn't it dear of our old soldiers/' said Ruth, 
“to g-g-give up going to the Reunion, and have 
just the little service and parade here, and give 
their money to the Red Cross, to help in the 
war?" 

Anne laughed. “Oh, Ruthie! You said 'the 
war' about this war," she said. 

“Well, why not?" Having used the word in¬ 
advertently, Ruth now defended it. “There never 
155 


156 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

was such a big war in the world. And we are in 
it; it is our war; some Village b-boys are there 
and others are going. It is The War, isn’t it, 
mother?” 

“Yes,,” her mother answered slowly. “This is 
The War. The other—we've been living in its 
shine and shadow all these years—it is history 
now; a war. Why, our old soldiers put in acts 
what none of us before have put in words—that 
this is The War, our war.” 

Presently the girls yawned and their fingers 
went more and more slowly with their knitting. 
Mrs. Wilson said an early bed hour would be 
the fitting end to their strenuous day. So they 
went upstairs, and Ruth escorted Anne to a spa¬ 
cious guest chamber. 

“This is the room W-Washington stayed in,” 
said Ruth. 

“I love it,” said Anne, looking around. “Oh! 
I love Broad Acres. Don’t you?” 

Ruth laughed. “Love it? Why, it’s a part of 
us. The way-back-grandfather that c-c-came 
from England built it like his home there, and 
all our people since have lived here. It’s home.” 
Her voice lingered and thrilled on the word. 
Then she threw her arms around Anne and 
kissed her. 

Anne had left her own old home early in her 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


157 

orphaned childhood, and now lived, as an adopted 
daughter, with friends in Washington. She was 
happy there and dearly loved; but Ruth, with her 
intense devotion to home and family, was always 
distressed when she remembered that Anne 
“didn’t belong to her own folks.” 

“I w-wish you lived with us,” she said, kissing 
Anne,, again and again. 

“Then I wouldn’t have the fun of coming to 
see you,” her cousin reminded her, returning the 
caresses. 

“Sweet William says having you all the time 
would be like having Christmas all the year.” 

Anne laughed. 

“Anne darling,” said Ruth, “I was g-going to 
stay with you to-night, but mother has a head¬ 
ache and may want a hot-water bottle or some¬ 
thing. You’ll not mind my staying with her? 
We’ll be across the hall, at the other end.” 

“Oh! I’m used to staying alone,” said Anne. 
“My room at home is across the hall from Aunt 
Sarah’s.” 

Ruth went out and Anne undressed and 
climbed into the great bed. She lay there, look¬ 
ing out into the soft summer night, listening to a 
mocking bird’s joyous melody. There was a 
magnolia tree in blossom near the front window 
and the night breeze wafted in the delicious odor 


158 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

of the blossoms. How beautiful and peaceful it 
all was! Could anything be lovelier than those 
great white magnolia blossoms, shining like 
moons in the dark foliage? Blossom-moons— 

fragrant white moons—moons- The moons 

came nearer and nearer. And as they drew 
nearer, they changed. They were no longer white 
and fragrant. They were red and hot. Why, 
they were bombs, bombs that Germans were 
throwing. They exploded with a great noise and 
blinding flame and thick, pungent, choking smoke. 

“Whizz-bangs, that’s what they are,” Anne 
thought, recalling something she had read about 
bombs that exploded time and time again, like 
Chinese firecrackers. 

She wanted to get away from them, but she 
could not. She was in the thick of the battle. 

Suddenly she sat up in bed and opened her eyes. 
The room was filled with smoke and there was a 
glare and a roar around her. Were the Germans 
here, attacking The Village? Then her senses 
awoke. The sounds that she heard were not the 
bursting of bombs,, but fire crackling and voices 
shouting. 

She sprang up and ran to the door. Smoke 
poured in, and through it she saw leaping flames, 
a great column of fire rising from the stairway 
between her and her cousin’s room. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


159 

“Cousin Agnes! Cousin Agnes! Ruth! oh, 
Ruth!” she called at the top of her voice. 

There was no answer. There was only the 
horrible roar of the mounting flames. She 
slammed the door to shut out the noise which was 
more terrifying than the smoke and the flames. 
She ran to a front window. The yard was full 
of people, her friends and cousins, who seemed 
very far away and strange, with their excited, 
anxious faces lighted by the red glare of the con¬ 
flagration. 

Some one saw her as soon as she opened the 
shutter and raised a shout of relief. “There she 
is! There's Anne!” 

“Anne, Anne! Oh, Anne!” 

There was an agonized screech from old 
Emma. The words were lost in the roar of the 
fire or unheeded in the excitement; but Dick knew 
afterward that he heard her yell, “That old 
devil! he’s burnin’ up little Miss Anne!” 

For a minute Anne stood dazed and motionless 
at the window. But now the fire had eaten 
through the door; the air was stifling with lurid 
smoke; the roaring, crackling flames came nearer. 
She was gasping, choking. She climbed on the 
window sill. 

“Don’t jump! don’t jump! We’ll get you in a 
minute!” called Dick. 


160 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

She stood still. It was a fearful distance; she 
might break her arm, leg, neck; but—she moved 
restlessly—anything would be better than being 
caught by those awful flames. 

“Wait, Anne, wait!” called Mrs. Osborne. 
“Wait! They are bringing a ladder.” 

A group of men came around the corner of 
the house, dragging a ladder. They raised it, but 
in their haste it was pushed too far to one side 
and caught on the window blind. Anne clutched 
at a swaying rung. 

“Stop, Anne! Steady, old girl, steady!” 

Dick pushed past Mr. Mallett, went like a cat 
up the ladder, steadied the upper end of it against 
the window sill, while Anne climbed down. 

Explanations came by degrees, piecemeal, in 
ejaculations. When Mrs. Wilson and Ruth 
awakened, the flames had made a wall across the 
hall which they could not cross. They called and 
called Anne, but she did not answer. 

“Oh! that’s what I heard in my sleep!” ex¬ 
claimed Anne. “I thought you were the Ger¬ 
mans.” 

At last they had to shut the door as a tem¬ 
porary barrier to the fire. When it blazed, they 
climbed on a trellis below one of the windows. 
There they clung till help came. 

Miss Fanny Morrison, who lived in the cottage 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 161 

next door, had awakened at last and she ran out, 
screaming and beating at doors, and aroused The 
Village. 

As soon as Mrs. Wilson and Ruth and Anne 
were rescued, people set to work to save the con¬ 
tents of the house. But the upper floor was cut 
off by the burning of the staircase, and the fire 
had now made such headway that they succeeded 
in getting only a few articles from the lower 
rooms. The rapidly advancing flames drove them 
back and they stood, in helpless, sorrowful 
groups, like watchers at a deathbed. 

“Oh, my home! my home! ,, sobbed poor Mrs. 
Wilson. 

Mrs. Osborne threw her arms around her. 
“Thank God, you and Anne and Ruth are safe.” 

“Yes, yes! Thank God for that. But my 
home,, my precious home!” 

“Go with Miranda, Agnes; go to The Roost,” 
urged Red Mayo. “Don’t distress yourself stay¬ 
ing here. We will put your things in the school- 
house; that’s safe, I’m sure.” 

But the poor lady stood and watched, with 
fascinated horror, the flames racing through the 
house and thrusting fierce, demonlike tongues 
out of the windows. 

“Stand back! out of the way!” shouted Red 
Mayo and Will Blair, The roof had caught; 


162 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


there was a great burst of flame,, burning shingles 
soared through the air. Fortunately, it was a 
windless night and the Village houses were far 
apart, in lawns and groves. 

After .that great upflare, the fire subsided. 
When the east wall toppled and crashed down, 
there was another fierce spurt of flame. Then 
the fire died down. And at last they all went 
sadly home. 

In the gray morning, an old, bent,, black negro 
man crept out of a shed on The Back Way and 
looked with a curious mixture of triumph and 
terror at the smoldering ruin, the blackened walls 
with the windows like ghastly loopholes. That 
was all that was left of Broad Acres, which had 
been for over a hundred years a home and a land¬ 
mark. 

“Of course you’ll stay right here with us,” 
said Mrs. Red Mayo Osborne to Mrs. Wilson, the 
next morning. 

“Undoubtedly!” Mr. Osborne was surprised 
that his wife considered it necessary to say so. 

“You and Ruth.” “Of course you will.” “Oh, 
yes!” and “Sure!” exclaimed Patsy, Sweet Wil¬ 
liam, David, and Dick. 

“Why, dears, you haven’t room for us,” said 
Mrs. Wilson. 

“Certainly, there is plenty of room,” said Mrs. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 163 

Osborne. “I have it all planned. You and Ruth 
will stay in ‘the bedroom/ Patsy will move out 
of it, into the dressing room that Sweet William 
will give up. He can sleep on a pallet in ‘the 
chamber’ or go into the ‘tumble-up room’ with 
Dick and David. Of course you will stay here.” 

“What’s that you are saying?” asked Black 
Mayo, who came up the walk just then. “ ‘Stay 
here?’ You aren’t hoping you can have Agnes 
and Ruth with you?” 

“Yes,, indeed!” said Patsy. “Now, don’t you 
come and try to hog them away. They are going 
to live with us.” 

“Indeed they are not,,” declared Black Mayo. 
“They're going to Larkland. Van is on the way 
with the wagon, Agnes, to carry your things. Of 
course you are coming to us. Why,, we really 
need you. Think of all those big empty rooms. 
And you'll be such company for Polly when I'm 
away.” 

While he was arguing the matter, the Miss 
Morrisons came up the walk, followed by Mr. 
Tavis and Mr. Mallett. 

Miss Elmira was an invalid, but she had 
hobbled across The Street with Miss Fanny to 
invite Mrs. Wilson and Ruth to come to their 
cottage. 

“It is so convenient, with just the grove be- 


164 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

tween it and Broad—the schoolhouse,” said Miss 
Fanny. “And it’s just right for two families; 
there are two rooms on each side, with the hall 
between, like a street, and we’ll be just as particu¬ 
lar about crossing it, we assure you.” 

“We spoke for them first. Stay with us, 
Cousin Agnes, you and Ruth; please do.,” pleaded 
Sweet William. 

“No; they want a home of their own,” said 
Mr. Mallett. “Miss Agnes, I ain’t got a house 
to ask you to, not to call it a house; it’s just a hole 
to put my gang of children in. I come to say we¬ 
ak are going to build you a house. We’ve been 
talking it over, Joe Spencer and Benny Hight 
and a bunch of others; everybody wants to help. 
There’s the sawmill in the Big Woods, and we’ll 
cut trees and haul lumber and-” 

“Shucks!” said Mr. Tavis, in his high, wheezy 
voice. “Ain’t no sense in building a house, when 
there’s one all ready for Miss Agnes and her gal 
to live in. I built a big house with upstairs and 
all that, ’cause I had the money and I wanted a 
place like you-alls. My old woman and me are 
used to living in one or two rooms, and it comes 
awkward to have so much house ’round us. We’re 
going to move in the little room next to the 
kitchen, and, Miss Agnes, you’re to take the rest 
of the house; you’re used to having room to 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 165 

spread yourself. We cert’n’ly will be thankful 
to you.” 

“Dear people! my people! my own family, all 
of you!” Mrs. Wilson said; it was some minutes 
before she could speak between sobs. “I can’t 
tell you—I never can say—how grateful I am— 
how I love you all, for—for being so dear and 
good to me.” 

“Dear Agnes!” Mrs. Osborne’s arms were 
around her. 

Mr. Mallett cleared his throat loudly. “Good to 
you!” he said. “Ain’t you taught my children 
and every Village child, never asking if you’d 
get pay or not, and beating sense in them that 
ain’t got no sense,, and-” 

“Ain’t I seen you grow up from a baby, age 
of my girl that’s dead?” said Mr. Tavis, blowing 
his nose like a trumpet. 

Sweet William wailed aloud. 

“Sh, sh, son!” His mother soothed him. “Why 
are you crying?” 

“I don’t know,” sobbed Sweet William. “I—I 
just got to cry.” 

“I didn’t know I could love you all better than 
I did!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilson. “Oh, you are 
so good, so dear! But we’ve made up our minds, 
Ruth and I, what we are going to do. We are go¬ 
ing to live in the schoolhouse.” 



i66 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“But, Agnes-” began Red Mayo. 

“But, Mayo!” she said. “It was the Broad 
Acres ‘office,’ just as The Roost here where you 
live was the ‘office’ of Osborne’s Rest, and it’s 
almost as large. There are two big rooms and a 
little one. Oh! there is room and room enough 
for Ruth and me.” 

“But,, Miss Agnes——” 

“Oh! Cousin Agnes-” 

“Agnes dear-” 

“But me no more buts,” she said, laughing 
through her tears. “It is best; I know it is best 
for us to make our home there. There’ll not be 
room for the Red Cross work-” 

“We’ll take that,” said Miss Fanny, hastily. 

“You wont! I will,” asserted Mr. Tavis. 

It was at last decided that the Red Cross work¬ 
ers were to occupy the Miss Morrisons’ spare 
rooms, and Mr. Tavis was comforted with the 
promise of furnishing a schoolroom in the 
autumn. 

Mrs. Wilson had her way about living in the 
cottage in Broad Acres yard, but The Village had 
its way about furnishing the rooms. At first 
people came pell-mell, haphazard, with their best 
and filled the cottage to overflowing. Then Polly 
Osborne, who was the soul of order and common 
sense, took charge of things. She made a list of 






THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 167 

house furnishings that had been saved and of 
those that were needed, and accepted and rejected 
offerings accordingly. She sent back several cen¬ 
ter tables and big clocks and three or four dozen 
parlor chairs, and asked for kitchen utensils and 
bed linen. 

By nightfall, the little home-to-be contained 
the choicest offerings of The Village. In the bed¬ 
room were the Blairs’ best mahogany wardrobe 
and bureau, and the Black Mayo Osbornes’ four- 
poster bedstead arrayed with the Red Mayo Os¬ 
bornes’ lavendered linen sheets. The kitchen 
stove had been saved and a procession of house¬ 
wives had piled up utensils and pantry supplies. 
In the living room Mr. Tavis’s red plush rock¬ 
ing chair reposed on the Miss Morrisons’ best rag 
rug. 

Beside the window was a bookcase full of 
books, clothbound and sheepskin old volumes that 
had been read and loved, and that had old names 
in them, like Mrs. Wilson’s own dear lost volumes 
which had belonged to the forefathers of The Vil¬ 
lage. There was a note from Black Mayo, say¬ 
ing of course it did not make any real difference 
whose house the books were in, because they be¬ 
longed to any one who wished to read them, but 
he’d rather they’d be in her home so his wife 
would not have them to dust. 


168 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


Mrs. Wilson laughed and cried as she read the 
note. 

A procession of people came in with food that 
broke all conservation rules—beaten biscuits, 
batter-yeast bread, fried chicken, baked ham, and 
countless varieties of jams and jellies and pickles 
and preserves. 

It was bedtime when at last Mrs. Wilson and 
Ruth were left alone. They undressed and hand 
in hand, they knelt at their bedside, and then they 
lay down to rest in the new home, shadowed by 
the ruins that had been home the night before. 

Who would have thought it possible for so sad 
a day to be so happy? 


CHAPTER XI 


L IKE most Southern communities, The Vil¬ 
lage had not the habit of celebrating the 
Fourth of July. It had its fireworks and 
jollifications at Christmas, which was the gala 
season of its year, a whole week of holiday and 
feasting. 

But now that the United States was in the 
World War, Independence Day acquired a new 
and deeper meaning. There were flags and ad¬ 
dresses in the Courthouse, and they sang “The 
Star-Spangled Banner ,, after “Dixie.” Then 
there was a picnic dinner, with plenty of fried 
chicken and a hooverized amount of ice cream 
and cake. 

The pleasant new patriotic enthusiasm about 
the Fourth was tremendously deepened two days 
later when Black Mayo came to the war gardens 
and told the workers about that wonderful 
American Fourth of July in France. 

The American Expeditionary Force had 
crossed the submarine-infested ocean and had 
landed, every man safe, at “a seaport of France.” 
On the Fourth, the splendid, brave, eager fellows 

169 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


170 

in khaki and blue jackets marched along the 
streets of Paris, hundreds and thousands of 
them, forerunners of hundreds of thousands who 
were coming. 

Paris went wild with joy. The streets were 
strewn with flowers; the Stars and Stripes waved 
a welcome; French bands played “The Star- 
Spangled Banner” and American bands re¬ 
sponded with the “Marseillaise.” 

“Vive 1 ’ Amerique! vive VAmerique!” 

“Pershing’s boys are here!” 

Ah, what a day it was! 

The Americans were sorely needed in 1917. 

In the west, British and French and Belgians 
were bravely holding the entrenched long line 
from the Alps to the Channel. But alas! for 
the east. There was a revolution in Russia, be¬ 
ginning with bread riots in Petrograd. Patriots 
echoed anxiously the prayer of the abdicating 
Czar: “May God help Russia!” as she dropped 
from the ranks of fighting Allies and became the 
battleground of warring factions. 

German submarines continued to take their 
toll on the seas. And German air raids grew 
more frequent. Night after night Zeppelins swept 
down, like huge, evil birds of prey; day after 
day airplanes darted and dived like swallows. 
People heard the whir of motors, the explosion 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 171 

of bombs, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns; in a 
few minutes it was over, all but the counting of 
the wounded and the dead, chiefly women and 
children. 

The Village listened with interest to all news 
from overseas as a part of “our war.” Then it 
turned to the work at home. 

In June men registered in obedience to the 
Draft Act. One day in July the Secretary of 
War, blindfolded, drew one capsule out of a 
great jar; it was opened; on a slip of paper in it 
was a number. Another capsule was drawn out; 
and another; and another. All day and until long 
after midnight went on that drawing of capsules 
containing numbers. 

And the numbers, when they came to The Vil¬ 
lage and to all the country places and little towns 
and great cities of the whole nation, were no 
longer mere numbers, but names; and when they 
went to the homes of the community they were 
neither numbers nor names, but sons, brothers, 
sweethearts, friends—men who had to go to 
fight, perhaps to die, for the nation. 

The end of the summer found nearly a million 
men under arms and in training camps scattered 
over the country. A great brave, efficient army 
of soldiers was being formed. And everywhere 
men and women and children were enrolled in 


172 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

the nation’s greater army of service, as patriotic 
and brave and efficient and as necessary as sol¬ 
diers. 

The Second Liberty Loan was under way, and 
people who had thought they had not a dollar 
beyond their needs found they could “buy a bond 
to help Uncle Sam win the war.” 

There was Red Cross work to do—feeding the 
hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick 
and wounded; millions of people were helping 
with money and service, at home and overseas. 

Millions, too, were enrolled in the work of food 
conservation. During that spring and summer 
and autumn of 1917, crop reports were watched 
as anxiously as news from the war front, for 
even the children knew that “armies march on 
their feet and on their stomachs.” 

At family worship, night and morning, in that 
little old-fashioned Presbyterian Village, voices 
prayed God to bless our homes and soldiers and 
Allies, and thanked Him for great ideals and 
wholesome food, for President Wilson and 
bounteous crops. 

The crops were, indeed, bounteous. There 
were record-breaking yields of corn and oats, 
and an abundant yield of potatoes. The wheat 
crop was smaller; we must stint at home, to send 
supplies to Europe. But the country, going 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


173 

calmly through its sugar famine, was ready for 
“meatless Tuesdays” and “wheatless Wednes¬ 
days”—anything, everything to help win the war. 

The members of Camp Fight Foe and Camp 
Feed Friend went enthusiastically to Broad 
Acres, one pleasant day in early autumn, to har¬ 
vest their crop of white potatoes. 

Mr. Mallett, who had volunteered to help with 
his horse and plow, ran a furrow beside each 
row; potato diggers had never been heard of in 
The Village. Behind him came the young gar¬ 
deners—collecting the tubers turned up by the 
plow,, picking them out of the soft soil, or raking 
out those that were more deeply embedded. Not 
one must be overlooked and left behind, for close 
was the contest between the rival gardeners. The 
bucket- and basketfuls of potatoes were emptied 
into a half-bushel measure, over which Mrs. 
Wilson presided, and then put into bags. The 
gardeners were jubilant over the results of their 
labors, and with reason. Mrs. Wilson said that 
Broad Acres had never yielded a better crop than 
the one they were harvesting. 

“Isn’t this a cracker jack?” cried David, hold¬ 
ing up a huge tuber. 

“Here’s a better one. It’s just as big as yours, 
and it’s smooth, instead of being all bumpy,” 
Patsy said critically. 


174 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“O-oh!” wailed Ruth. “J-just see this lovely 
one that the plow c-cut in two. It would have 
been best of all. Isn’t it a pity?” 

“These nice little round ones are loverly,” said 
Sweet William, who was making a collection of 
the tiny, smallest potatoes. “The little Belgians 
can play marbles with them first, and then eat 
them.” 

“Alice, empty your basket in the measure and 
let’s see if we haven’t another bushel,” called 
Patsy. 

“You girls! Make haste and put your potatoes 
in a bag, so we can have the measure,,” urged 
Steve. “We’ll fill it in a hurry.” 

When the last measureful was emptied, it was 
found that the boys had a half peck more than 
the girls. 

“Yah! yah! Of course we beat you!” cried 
Steve. 

“By measuring all Sweet William’s marbles,” 
Anne Lewis said scornfully. “Our potatoes are 
bigger. And anyway you had four more hills 
on your last row.” 

“Yes, sirree! And this is the first crop out 
of our gardens. You wait till we come to the 
last,” said Patsy, confidently. 

“Our gardens will feed a lot of soldiers,” 
Sweet William said proudly. “They’ll take care 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 175 

of our Village boys a year—or a while, anyway. 
Jeff’s such a big eater! We’re all working our 
hardest; and Scalawag’s helping.” 

Sweet William never tired of singing Scala¬ 
wag’s praises, since by his aid the destroyer of 
the war gardens had been discovered and pun¬ 
ished. 

Kit„ closely questioned by Mr. Black Mayo 
Osborne, confessed that he had gone into the 
garden, and had hidden behind the arbor when he 
heard some one coming; he had kicked Scalawag, 
to drive him away; and—he finally owned—he 
had driven in the cow from the adjoining pasture. 

He gave no reason except “because”; and Mr. 
Osborne shook his head and frowned. There 
was something back of this, he felt sure. What 
was it? Were there wanton mischief-makers in 
The Village ? The burning of Broad Acres—was 
it an accident, caused by rats and matches, as was 
generally believed? He wondered, but he got no 
clews, and other matters were disturbing him. 
For the present, things went on their usual quiet 
way in The Village. 

When the gardeners started to dig potatoes, 
Dick shrugged his shoulders and started off 
whistling, as if he were having a grand good 
time. But, to tell the truth, he was getting tired 
of these excursions to the mine. He continued 


176 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

them, at more and more infrequent intervals., 
chiefly to plague Anne and Patsy. 

Time after time they had left gardening and 
Red Cross work and followed him. Sometimes 
he had turned across a field, and twisted and 
doubled—like an old red fox, to which Black 
Mayo compared him—and made a successful 
get-away. 

Sometimes, in a teasing humor, he kept just 
far enough ahead to encourage them to continue 
the pursuit and led them over miles of rough 
country and back to The Village; then he would 
ask, with an exasperating grin, “Haven’t we had 
a lovely walk?” 

Anne looked after him to-day and said, as 
often before, “Oh! I wish we could find out Dick’s 
secret.” 

“If just we could!” Patsy replied; “but—well, 
sometimes I think we might as well give up. We 
can’t keep on forever trotting after him, with the 
Red Cross and Camp Feed Friend and the 
Canning Club and Happy Acres and all the 
other things there are to do.” 

“Oh, no, Pats-pet! We’ll not give up,” Anne 
said decidedly. “There’s some way to manage 
it. But of course we mustn’t take time from the 
garden; not now, while there’s so much to do. 
The main thing is to make our garden beat those 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


177 

bragging boys’. Oh! I’m so glad I’m going to 
stay here this winter and see it through.” 

On account of the housing shortage in Wash¬ 
ington, Anne’s adoptive parents had given up 
their home to war workers, and Anne was to con¬ 
tinue her studies this winter with her cousins in 
The Village; Mrs. Wilson was as good as a uni¬ 
versity for scholarship. 

Dick went by Larkland as usual. His Cousin 
Mayo was silent and seemed preoccupied as they 
went to the pigeon cote. 

“Here’s a bird for you,” he said, taking one at 
random, 

Dick stood a minute with the caged pigeon in 
his hand, then said abruptly: “Cousin Mayo, you 
told me that you were going in the army. 
When?” 

“Hey?” Black Mayo gave a start. 

Dick repeated his question. 

His cousin frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. 
“I don’t know. There are things here. I don’t 
see how I can get away.” 

Couldn’t get away! Why, Cousin Mayo had 
always been footloose; he picked up, on a day’s 
notice, and went to Alaska or Mexico or the 
South Sea Islands, for a month or two, or a year 
or two. And now to say he couldn’t get away! 
People were saying he stayed at home because 


178 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

he was a coward and a slacker. It was not true. 
And why were they saying it about Cousin Mayo 
and not about other men who didn’t go to war ? 

Dick went on toward the mine, feeling mysti¬ 
fied and worried. He proceeded cautiously as 
usual, varying his route and making cut-offs and 
circuits to avoid possible observation and pursuit. 
The door of Solomon Gabe’s cabin was open, as 
it often was, revealing nothing in the gloomy in¬ 
terior. Dick circled behind the hovel, going 
rather close to keep away from a little swamp. 
The place was usually as silent as the grave. 
But now he heard two voices—Solomon Gabe’s 
old monotone and another voice that he felt he 
might have recognized if it had been a little 
louder. He scurried along the edge of the 
swamp, and in a minute he was out of sight and 
hearing. 

He paused at Mine Creek as usual to set free 
his bird. It perched on his shoulder a moment; 
then it soared up and wheeled and was off. 

Dick went on to the mine and stood several 
minutes on the lookout before he put his ladder 
into the hole and descended. He always took 
precautions against stray passers-by, although in 
all these months he had never seen any one there¬ 
abouts. 

Down in the mine, he lighted a candle and went 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


179 

to one of the lower spurs and set to work, follow¬ 
ing the line between a layer of clay and rock. 
After a while he came to a projecting ledge of 
rock and, using pick and sledge hammer with 
difficulty, he broke off a piece. He picked it 
up—it was very heavy—and looked at it. On 
the broken surface there were bright specks and 
streaks. How they shone and sparkled in the 
candlelight! Silver! Ah, he had found it at last! 

He sped to the mine opening to examine his 
find by daylight, and his eager confidence was 
confirmed. How beautifully the specks and 
streaks glinted and glittered! He climbed out 
and hid his ladder, and went homeward on winged 
feet. He was too hurried and eager to take his 
usual roundabout course; but he saw no one as 
he sped along the Old Plank Road except Mr. 
Smith, whom he passed on the hill beyond Peter 
Jim’s cabin. 

Dick dropped from a trot to a walk when he 
came to The Village, and sauntered up The Street 
to The Roost, where his father was sitting on the 
porch reading a Congressional Record. With an 
elaborate assumption of carelessness, Dick held 
out the shining stone. 

“See what I’ve found, father,” he said. “What 
do you reckon it is?” 

Mr. Osborne examined the stone deliberately. 


180 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“H-m! It is-” 

A vagrant breeze caught the Congressional 
Record and tossed it on the floor. 

'Tick up that paper, son,,” said Mr. Osborne, 
"and smooth out the pages; gently, so as not to 
tear them. You know I file-” 

"Yes, sir. But my rock, father!” Dick in¬ 
terrupted in uncontrollable impatience. 

"It is quartz,” said his father; "quartz with a 
little silver in it. These minute particles and 
streaks are free silver, such as is found occa¬ 
sionally in the quartz in this section. This looks 
like a poor specimen from the Old Sterling Mine. 
Where did you get it?” 

"Oh! I found it,” Dick said vaguely. 

"Somewhere along Mine Creek, I presume, 
my son?” 

"Yes, sir.” 

"Well, don’t venture too close to the old mine,” 
cautioned his father. "Of course you wouldn’t 
think of entering it. The timbers are probably 
all decayed; there might be a cave-in any time. 
It is a dangerous place.” 

"Yes, sir,” Dick answered meekly. 

And forthwith he went to Mr. Blair’s store 
and invested his last dime in two candles. He 
was very zealous about going to the mine for 
some time after that, but he only succeeded in 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 181 

chipping off a few bits rather worse than better 
than the one he had first secured. 

The glow of that little success died away., and 
he felt discouraged and ashamed of himself when 
his schoolmates held their garden exhibit in the 
Tavern parlor. 

All The Village and the surrounding country 
gathered there on the evening of that crisp 
autumn day, the last Saturday in October. The 
big parlor that had been a gathering place since 
stagecoach days had a gala air. It was decorated 
with American flags, and the vegetables were 
piled in pyramids on tables covered with red, 
white, and blue tissue paper. Every withered 
leaf had been cut from the cabbages. Each po¬ 
tato and onion and tomato had been washed as 
carefully as a baby’s face. The ears of corn had 
the husks turned back and tied, and were fas¬ 
tened in great bunches on the wall with tri¬ 
colored streamers. By the side of each pile of 
vegetables was a card saying how many bushels 
or gallons or quarts the garden had yielded. The 
girls had jars and jars of tomatoes, peas, beans,, 
corn, berries—canned, pickled, preserved. 

On a neatly lettered card above the door were 
the President’s words: “Every bushel of potatoes 
properly stored, every pound of vegetables prop¬ 
erly put by for future use, every jar of fruit 


182 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


preserved, adds that much to our insurance of 
victory, adds that much to hasten the end of this 
conflict.” 

“I tell you, dears,” quavered Mrs. Spencer’s 
gentle old voice, as she looked around, “this ex- 
hibition would be a credit to grown-up farmers 
anywhere. I don’t believe,” she added thought¬ 
fully, “that people worked during The—that 
other war, like they are working now. Of course 
that was at home, and all our men were in it and 
our women all felt it as a personal thing. But 
people—well, they weren’t organized. Did you 
ever know children do anything like this, all 
this gardening and Red Cross work? Oh, it’s 
wonderful, wonderful! And they’ve all worked 
—even that dear little dove, Sweet William.” 

“Oh, Sweet William! I always knew you’re 
a bird,” laughed Anne Lewis, who was standing 
near. “Now I know the kind. You are a dove; 
oh, you are a dove of war, like Cousin Mayo’s 
birds!” 

“Good, Anne!” said Black Mayo. “Sweet 
William is a dove of war, and so are all you dear 
children and all you good and lovely people here 
and everywhere. Doves of war, harbingers of 
real peace that can only come from winning this 
war and securing freedom and human rights.” 

“Come, come, Mr. Osborne!” called Mr. Mar- 


THE OLD MINE S SECRET 183 

tin, who was in charge of the County Corn Clubs: 
“Mr. Jones and I are waiting for you. We judges 
must get to work. And we've got no easy job/' 
he said, looking around at the exhibits. 

The garden produce was arranged in two 
groups. No one except the contestants knew 
which was the girls' and which was the boys'. 
The judges went from one to the other—looking, 
admiring, considering, reconsidering. At last 
they announced their decision: Both exhibits 
were highly creditable, but this was the better. 

There was a shout of joy from the girls. They 
had won, they had won! After a little pause, the 
boys—for they were generous rivals—joined in 
the applause and congratulations. 

Anne Lewis, who had suggested the war gar¬ 
dening, was deputed by the girls to receive the 
silver cup presented by Black Mayo Osborne, and 
the blue ribbon; and David received the red rib¬ 
bon for the boys. 

Dick Osborne looked so forlorn that David 
said: “Cheer up, old boy! If you hadn't been 
busy about something else when we started the 
garden, you'd have been in it with us." 

“I'm, not much forwarder about that than I 
was in April," Dick confessed. “I'm going to 
keep on trying, though. But if there’s a war 
garden next year I’ll be in i^." 


184 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“There isn’t any 'if’ about it,” declared David. 
“We are going to keep on gardening, to help win 
the war. And we’ll get that cup back from the 
girls next year; see if we don’t.” 

“We’ll see—you don’t,” said Patsy. 

Just then there was a little stir at the door. 
Mr. Mallett, who had been to Redville on busi¬ 
ness, came in and said something in an excited 
undertone to Black Mayo Osborne. Mr. Osborne 
asked a quick question or two, and then jumped 
on a table and caught the big flag draped over 
the mantelpiece and waved it above his head. 

“Hurrah! hurrah!” he said. “News, great 
news!” 

“The Liberty Loan has gone over the top,,” 
guessed Red Mayo. 

“Of course, of course! But something else is 
going over the top. Our American boys! They 
are facing the Germans in 'No Man’s Land.’ To¬ 
day, to-day for the first time, our American boys 
were in the first-line trenches on the French 
front. Hurrah! hurrah! We are in The War!” 

Every voice joined in a cheer that rang and 
rang again. Mr. Tavis and the other old Con¬ 
federates raised the “rebel yell,” their old valiant 
battle cry. The children clapped their hands and 
shouted: “We are in it! We are in it! We are 
iin The War!” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 185 

Sweet William clapped and cheered with the 
best. Then he turned to his mother. “What 
does it mean, mother, our men ‘in the trenches' ?" 
he asked. “Does it mean we've beat the war?" 

“It means our soldiers are over there,, fighting 
side by side with our Allies against the Ger¬ 
mans," explained his mother. “I don't know 
whether it's defeat or victory to-day; but we 
Americans will stay there till we win The War 
—if you and I have to go to help, little son—to 
conquer the world for peace and freedom." 


CHAPTER XII 


I N his Christmas sermon, the Village minister 
gave thanks that the British, in this twentieth- 
century crusade of liberty, had accomplished 
the purpose of the old Crusades and had wrested 
Jerusalem, the Holy City, from the Turks who 
had held it for nearly seven hundred years. And 
a few Sundays later, he charged each citizen to 
take, as his New Year’s resolution for the nation, 
the “fourteen principles of peace” formulated 
by the first citizen of America and of the world. 

Thanksgiving and peace terms! Those were 
the things people were taking as matters of 
course, feeling sure, that now America was in the 
war, the victorious end would come, and that 
soon. But days began to darken. The spring 
of 1918 was a tragic, anxious time. 

Germany had failed to clear the seas and win 
the war with submarines. Every few minutes 
a wooden or steel or concrete ship left the New 
World, bearing soldiers and food and munitions, 
and ninety-nine per cent of them came safe to 
harbor; soon there would be millions of trained 
and equipped doughboys in Europe. Germany’s 
one chance was to strike a decisive blow on the 


186 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 187 

Western Front before those fast-coming Ameri¬ 
cans were there in full force. 

And Germany was ready to strike that blow. 
The Reds' shameful peace at Brest-Litovsk en¬ 
abled her to mass armies in the west. She had 
there Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff and six 
million soldiers. And having the inner lines, she 
could concentrate troops and outnumber the Allies 
two or three to one in every attack, although they 
had eight million men. 

Late in March, the great German offensive 
began. 

The first drive was on a fifty-mile front. It 
swept onward with terrible force, capturing vast 
numbers of prisoners and guns. The monster 
guns in the St. Gobain Forest dropped shells on 
a church in the heart of Paris. Late in April, 
that drive was checked, but the Germans had 
thrust forward thirty-four miles on their way to 
the French capital. 

Before that first drive was halted, the second 
drive began in Flanders; its purpose was to reach 
the Channel ports and to cut off the British Army 
from the French and Americans. The British 
held their broken ranks and stood “with their 
backs to the wall.” The Germans were again 
checked, but they had advanced ten long, hard- 
fought miles. 


188 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


The Village received with growing dismay the 
tidings from the battle front. Months ago the 
older men had offered themselves for war service 
and formed a company, and now they drilled 
regularly on Courthouse Green. They might as 
well be ready, in case they were needed, said Red 
Mayo Osborne. 

Black Mayo Osborne did not join the company. 
Nor did he enter the army as he had said months 
before he was going to do. He spent a great deal 
of his time wandering about the countryside, 
with baskets of pigeons, seemingly unconscious 
of the sneers at his expense—that came most 
frequently and openly from men who were leav¬ 
ing no stone of political influence unturned, to 
keep themselves and their sons and brothers out 
of the army. 

One of Black Mayo’s favorite walks was to¬ 
ward the high bridge, eight miles from The Vil¬ 
lage,, where frequent trains bearing soldiers and 
supplies crawled across the long, high trestle far 
above the river and the lowlands. 

One day as he was sauntering near the bridge, 
he saw a man and boy who were following a by¬ 
path through the woods. Circling through a pine 
thicket, he came near enough to hear part of 
their conversation. 

The man was not speaking English, but Black 


THE OLD MINE S SECRET 189 

Mayo understood what he was saying: “Not 
train time. You walk the bridge and”—there 
Black Mayo missed some words. 

“No,” the boy said curtly. 

The man insisted. 

“That will I not!” declared the boy, speaking 
in English. “Nothing to hurt, all to help!” 

“Coward that you are!” the man cried in his 
guttural language. “You, a boy as at play, could 
do it without suspicion. Must I risk, not only 
myself, but the Cause?” 

Then he discovered Black Mayo, almost at his 
elbow, apparently intent on the pigeons—scrawl¬ 
ing a line and affixing it to a bird. He released 
it; it soared, circled, and was gone. 

Mr. Smith knew that, at that nearness, Mr. 
Osborne must have heard his words and under¬ 
stood probably his purpose. With an oath he 
jerked out a pistol. Albert caught his arm, and 
before he could free it and take aim, Black Mayo 
said: “Look out! That pigeon carried my mes¬ 
sage home: ‘High bridge. Threatened by Smith.” 

For a minute the two men stood silent, face to 
face. 

Smith thought quickly. To shoot down this 
unarmed man whom he hated—only to be ar¬ 
rested as a murderer- The game was not 

worth the candle. He spoke with an angry laugh: 



THE OLD MINE'S SECRET 


190 

“You did startle me. Ach! I was talking non¬ 
sense with my nephew. Go, with your little birds! 
But if”—he scowled, and his evil left eye became 
a mere glinting spark—“if you make harm where 
there is none, I will shoot you with my last act.” 

Black Mayo considered a moment before he 
answered: “I will go home and receive my own 
message. But I will put another where it will 
be found the minute harm comes to me.” 

Mr. Smith laughed and put his pistol into his 
pocket. “Go,, save your skin,” he sneered. Then 
he said to his nephew: “Ach! That is the man 
you adore, a coward who dares not tell on me 
for fear of himself. It is well. The German 
victory is a matter now of the days.” 

Was that indeed true? Every day brought 
new Allied losses; guns and men and miles; on 
the north the English were being forced back; in 
the south the French were being forced back. 

But in that time of dire need, two new factors 
entered the war. One was Foch as commander- 
in-chief ; the other was the Americans. 

Instead of being many, the Allied armies be¬ 
came one; American Pershing, British Haig, 
French Petain, Italian Diaz, Belgian Albert, 
served under Foch, whom all the world knew as 
a brilliant strategist. 

So far the American troops had been in train- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


191 

ing and held in reserve. But late in May news¬ 
papers had two news items. One announced, in 
glaring headlines, that the Germans had ad¬ 
vanced ten miles, crossed two rivers, and taken 
twenty-five thousand prisoners; the other said, 
in small type, that the Americans had advanced 
their lines and taken the village of Cantigny and 
two hundred prisoners. A big advance and a 
little one. Ah! but in that day at Cantigny the 
Americans were tried and not found wanting. 

The Germans, already talking of a “hard 
peace,” pushed forward on their “Victory Drive” 
toward Paris. Hundreds of square miles were 
taken, and thousands of prisoners and guns. 
They crossed the Marne River and reached 
Chateau-Thierry, only forty miles from Paris. 

Had Foch and the Americans come too late? 

Ah! now they moved, swiftly and successfully, 
both of them. Foch had let the Germans advance 
so as to make flank attacks. The Americans, 
given the post of honor at Chateau-Thierry, 
drove back the best of the Germans and carried 
positions deemed impregnable. Up and down 
the long battle line from the Alps to the North 
Sea, went the tidings: “The Americans have held 
the Germans. They are as good as our best. A 
million of them are here, and there are millions 
ready to come.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


192 

The Germans made their last great offensive, 
a desperate drive on a sixty-mile front toward 
Paris. They were checked. They retreated. 
The Allies took the offensive. 

During these stirring days, The Village could 
not wait the leisurely roundabout course of the 
mail rider and accept day-old papers as “news.” 
Some one rode every day to Redville and brought 
back the morning Dispatch and then the war 
news was read aloud in the post office. 

There was a deep personal as well as patriotic 
interest now., for Village volunteers and drafted 
soldiers were overseas. All the community 
mourned with the Spencers when Jeff’s name was 
among the “missing” after Chateau-Thierry. 
They looked every day for news of him, but hope 
died as weeks and months passed and none came. 

One September Saturday brought an overseas, 
letter for Mrs. Mallett. Dick Osborne ran to 
deliver it, and then they waited for her to come 
as usual and share its tidings. 

An hour passed and she did not come. Then 
she walked swiftly down The Street and passed 
the post office, without turning her head. Her 
face was pale and she was biting her lips to keep 
them steady. 

“It’s bad news,” they whispered one to another. 

“Awful!” groaned Dick, as she went straight 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 193 

to the pastor’s study at the back of the church. 
No one knocked at that door on sermon-sacred 
Saturday afternoon unless the need were ex¬ 
treme. 

Mr. Harvie met her with grave, kind, ques¬ 
tioning eyes. “My dear Mrs. Mallett-” he 

began. 

Then she broke down and sobbed as if her 
heart would break. 

“It’s Fayett,,” she said as soon as she could 
speak. “He’s in hospital.” 

“The Great Physician can heal our dear boy. 
Let us-” 

“He says he’s all right; it was a flesh wound; 
he was starting back to the army. It—it isn’t 
that!” 

“Not that? Then what-” 

Mrs. Mallett again burst into tears. 

“My dear woman, what is it?” asked Mr. 
Harvie. 

“Oh!” she gasped out the awful news. 
“They’ve got him; those terrible Catholics. Read 
—you read for yourself.” 

She handed him the letter and sat there sob¬ 
bing with her face buried in her apron. 

As Mr. Harvie read Fayett’s letter, his face 
cleared and he set his lips to keep back a smile. 
“Don’t cry, Mrs. Mallett,” he said gently. 





194 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“You’ve reason to be glad and proud of your son. 
And I’m sure he’s just as good a Presbyterian 
as when he was here in the Village Sunday school. 
He-” 

“But they’ve give him their cross; he too-ook 
it!” she sobbed. 

“It was given not as a symbol of religion, but 
as a token of valor,” he explained. “Don’t you 
see what he says in this sentence or two?—that 
he went under fire from his refuge in a trench to 
the rescue of two wounded men in a disabled 
tank.” 

“He had to help them out; they couldn’t get 
away,” she said. 

“Just so; and he saved them at the risk of his 
own life. That is why this Croix de Guerre was 
given. Fayett is a hero.” 

“Course he is. Did they think he was a 
coward?” she asked indignantly. “But he ain’t 
any better’n Jack. And Jack, my little Jack, is 
in this new draft.” 

Jack’s eighteenth birthday was just past, and 
so he came in the second draft that included men 
between eighteen and forty-five. For the most 
part, this draft, like the first one, was met frankly 
and bravely. But if any one had observed care¬ 
fully, which no one seemed to be doing, he might 
have found two little Village groups where senti- 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


195 

ment seemed to drift away from the current of 
loyalty. 

One was in the shed on The Back Way where 
Lincum had his cobbler’s bench. His father, 
Solomon Gabe, was there oftener than formerly; 
perhaps he was lonely now that his other son, 
Caesar, had been drafted for service. The old 
man sat far at the back of the shed, mumbling to 
himself or throwing a sharp sentence into his 
son’s conversations with other negroes. They 
talked in lower tones and laughed less than usual; 
and when they went away, they sometimes let fall 
curious misstatements and misunderstandings 
about the war and the draft, like that of Emma’s, 
which the white people who heard them laughed 
at, tried to explain, and then forgot. 

But one would have felt more disturbed at the 
other group that lounged on the Tavern porch 
on Saturday afternoons, chewing and smoking 
and whittling. Mr. Charles Smith was generally 
there, and the most ignorant and least public- 
spirited of the men about The Village. 

“Now what do you fellows think—” Jake An¬ 
drew was saying fiercely one day. Mr. Smith 
nudged him, Jake turned, saw Black Mayo Os¬ 
borne approaching, and concluded in an entirely 
different tone, “of—of the weather?” 

Mr. Osborne laughed. “You fellows spend a 


ig 6 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

lot of energy discussing—weather and crops,” he 
said, speaking lightly but glancing keenly about 
him, “Don’t you ever talk about public affairs, 
this great war we are in?” 

There was a little embarrassed silence. Mr. 
Smith’s suave voice broke it. “We are poor and 
hard-worker farmers, Mr. Osborne. About 
crops and weather we are interested to talk. We 
have not the gentleman’s time to amuse with 
pretty little doves.” 

The other men snickered or guffawed. Black 
Mayo seemed about to speak, then turned on his 
heel and walked away. 

“Doves! He’ll send them to war; but he ain’t 
so ready to give his folks,,” said Jake Andrews, 
who had done a deal of political wirepulling to 
get off his drafted sons. 

“Or himself,” growled Zack Gordan, a young 
ne’er-do-well, who had made the widowed 
mother who supported him an excuse for evad¬ 
ing war service. “What business have we got in 
this war anyway? What harm have them Ger¬ 
mans ever done us?” 

“Now what?” inquired Mr. Smith. He darted 
a look of pure venom after Black Mayo. “That 
fellow is a queer one. Can one believe he goes, 
comes, comes, goes about the little birds?” He 
gave a scornful, incredulous laugh. “And you 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 197 

say he had the years of absences? Where?” He 
made the question big and condemning. 

Ever since the April day that Charles Smith 
had lain in the mud and looked up at Black Mayo 
Osborne’s mocking face, his heart had been full 
of hate. For a few weeks after the incident at 
the bridge, he had been cautious, perhaps a little 
fearful. But as time passed and Black Mayo 
kept silence, Mr. Smith grew contemptuously 
bold and missed no chance for slur and insinua¬ 
tion against the man he hated. 

And slur and insinuation were not in vain. 
The community had always accepted Black 
Mayo’s roving habits without question, never 
surprised when he went away, welcoming him 
warmly when he turned up at home a week or a 
month or a year later. But now—not one of 
them could have said why—they were suspicious 
of those unknown weeks and months and years. 

“And no one can question him or seek to know 
his goings, for he is an a-ris-to-crat.” Mr. 
Smith’s voice was silky. 

Jake Andrews uttered an oath. “’Ristocrat! 
I’m sick and tired of this old ’ristocrat business. 
He ain’t no more’n any other man, for all his 
being a Mayo and a Osborne. I’m a law officer, 
and so’s my Cousin Bill at Redville. I’m going 
to look into things. Seems to me-” 



198 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Easy, friend!” Mr. Smith chuckled and 
pulled at his fingers, making his knuckles snap 
in a way he had when he was pleased. “Those 
girls come.” 

The girls were Anne and Patsy. Mrs. Osborne 
had asked them to carry a basket of food to 
Louviny, Lincum’s wife. He had said she had 
a “misery in her back” and was “mightly porely,” 
so she could not come to help about Mrs. Os¬ 
borne’s house-cleaning. 

Anne and Patsy gave casual glances and greet¬ 
ings to the group on the porch. 

“Isn’t that Mr. Smith horrid?” said Patsy. 
“I despise a man like that—with a mouth that 
runs up on one cheek when he grins.” 

“And I despise a man that’s so hateful about 
Cousin Mayo—laughing about his pigeons and 
saying things about his not being in the army.” 

“Cousin Mayo used to speak so often of going; 
now he never says anything about it. He looks 
awfully worried.” 

“Dear Cousin Mayo!” Anne said affection¬ 
ately. “He’s in this draft, and he may have to 
go. I don’t want him not to go, but, oh, how we’d 
miss him! Even when you don’t see him, you 
feel The Village is a happier place to live in be¬ 
cause he’s here. It’s a kind of adventure to meet 
him on the road.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


199 

“Yes,” said Patsy, “he sets your mind traveling 
to all sorts of lovely, unexpected places.” 

“Don’t his doves make you feel excited?” said 
Anne. “Oh, I hope some of his birds were with 
our boys fighting at St.-Mihiel. There must 
have been! For Cousin Will read in the paper 
that they had three thousand carrier pigeons.” 

Chattering thus, the girls beguiled their way 
to Lincum’s cabin, on the edge of the old Tolliver 
place. They took a short cut across a field, and 
then as they came close to the cabin they heard 
loud voices and laughter that was more spiteful 
than merry. They paused at the old rail fence. 
There was a tangle of blackberry vines and sassa¬ 
fras bushes between them and the house. 

“That’ll be a grand day for us.” 

They could not see the speaker, but they recog¬ 
nized her voice. She was Betty Bess, a “trifling” 
negro girl whom Caesar had been “going with” 
before he was drafted. 

“You’re right, honey,” agreed Louviny. She 
was bustling about, with no sign of the “misery” 
that her husband said was keeping her bedrid. 
She threw aside the broom and sat down in a 
splint-bottomed chair. “I’ve been like old Bet 
mule in de treadmill—go, go, go, an’ nuver git 
nowhar. But now I’m gwine in de promised 
land. I’m gwine to eat turkey an’ cake. An’ 


200 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


I’m gwine to have six silk dresses an’ a rockin’- 
cheer. An’ Monday mornin’ I’m gwine to put 
on my blue silk dress an’ set my cheer on de porch 
an’ rock—an’ rock—an’ rock!” 

She swayed back and forth as she spoke and 
her voice was shrill and jubilant. 

“An’ Chewsday mornin’ I’m gwine to put on 
my purple silk dress, an’ Wednesday my green 
silk dress, an’ Thursday I’ll dress in red, an’ 
Friday in yaller, an’ Sat’day I’ll put on my pink 
silk dress. An’ Sunday,” she concluded tri¬ 
umphantly, “I’m gwine to lay out all six my silk 
dresses an’ look ’em up an’ down an’ take my 
ch’ice.” 

Patsy laughed. “Did you ever hear such 
foolishness?” she asked. 

“What’s that? Who’s out thar?” queried 
Betty Bess, sharply. 

“I reckon you hearn dat old dominecky hen 
a-squawkin’,” said Louviny, bringing her chair 
down with a thump. 

Patsy, followed by Anne, came out of the 
thicket and went to the door. 

“Howdy, Aunt Louviny,” said Patsy. “Lin- 
cum said you were mighty bad off with a misery 
in your back, and so mother asked us to come 
to see you. But we ought to have waited till 
you had on one of your six silk dresses.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


201 


She laughed, but the woman looked confused 
—frightened, Anne would have said, if that had 
not been too absurd a thought. 

“Wh-what—what you mean, Miss Patsy?” 
Louviny stammered. “What—what is you 
talkin’ ’bout?” 

“About what I heard you say,” responded 
Patsy. 

“You—you ain’t hear me say nothin’—nothin’ 
much,” Louviny said defensively. 

“Oh! yes, I did. I heard you say you were 
tired working like a mule in a treadmill, and you 
are going to have six silk dresses and a rocking- 
chair,” said Patsy, laughing. 

Louviny, still confused, looked relieved. 
“Shuh, Miss Patsy! You mustn’t mind my 
foolishness. I was just talkin’ ’bout what I 
would do, if I had all them things.” 

“Lincum said you were 'mighty porely,’ ” said 
Anne. “And so we brought you some soup and 
rolls.” 

“But you don’t deserve them,,” said Patsy; “for 
you aren’t sick.” 

“Lawsy, honey! I’ve been havin’ sech a 
misery in my back I couldn’t lay still, neithermore 
move,” whined Louviny. “Uh, it was turrible, 
turrible! I got a little easement just now, an’ I 
crope out o’ bed to clean up de house.” 


202 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Here are the soup, and rolls,” Patsy said 
shortly, and she turned away. 

“Wasn’t it queer the way Louviny was talk¬ 
ing?” Anne said presently. “It sounds so—so 
impertinent.” 

“Um, h’m,” agreed Patsy. “She’s a trifling 
thing, and made up that excuse about being sick, 
to keep from working for mother.” 

“She’s a silly thing!” laughed Anne. “Where'd 
she expect to get six silk dresses? Oh, Patsy! 
Let’s go by Larkland and help Cousin Mayo feed 
the pigeons.” 

This was evidently their day for appearing 
where they were not expected or wanted. As 
they went up the walk, they saw, through the 
open front door, two men in the hall—Cousin 
Mayo and a stranger, a tall, fair, youngish man. 
They had only a glimpse of him, however, for 
Cousin Mayo opened the parlor door, ushered 
him in, and shut the door. Then Mr. Osborne 
came forward to greet the girls, went with them 
into the sitting room,, and looked about for 
Cousin Polly. He did not mention the guest 
shut up in the parlor, and the girls—for the first 
time at Larkland—felt themselves in the way. 
They soon started home, wondering who the 
stranger was. 

“Oh, I know; I’m sure I know,” Anne ex- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


203 

claimed. “It’s Kuno Kleist, Cousin Mayo’s 
German friend. Fair and light-haired; he’s a 
real German.” 

“But what would he be doing here?” asked 
Patsy. 

Anne’s imagination was equal to the occasion. 
“You know he’s a Socialist, and he doesn’t like 
war. Cousin Mayo has brought him here to 
hide, to keep the kaiser from making him be a 
soldier, and he doesn’t want any one to know 
he’s here.” 

“He might have told us. We’d never let any 
one know,,” said Patsy. 

“Never!” Anne agreed emphatically. 

The girls took the path by Happy Acres. If 
they had gone by the mill, they would have met 
Dick, who had chosen this afternoon for one of 
his visits to the mine that were now rare because 
of failing interest and because this year he was 
heart and hand with the others in war gardening. 
But there was nothing to do in the garden now, 
and this was too good an outdoors day not to 
go adventuring. His hopes and spirits rose with 
the crisp, brilliant weather. He had found some 
silver; he might find a great deal. He had as 
good tools as the old blacksmith. How grand it 
would be to find a big lump of solid silver! He 
would buy a Liberty Bond and give a lot of 


204 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

money to the Red Cross. How all the other 
boys would envy him! And the girls would know 
he was “some boy!” 

He scurried along the Old Plank Road until 
he reached Mine Creek, where the path turned 
off to the Old Sterling Mine. Suddenly he 
stopped stock-still, listening intently. Yes, there 
were voices; and coming nearer. A dozen steps 
away was the tumbled-down cabin, the old black¬ 
smith shop. He crept into the rubbish pile—it 
was little more—to wait till the people passed 
by. But they did not pass. They stopped at the 
creek. Dick, peeping between the logs, could see 
them plainly; they were two negro men, Solomon 
Gabe and his son Lincum. 

Old Solomon Gabe, with wild, wandering eyes, 
was rocking back and forth, mumbling to him¬ 
self. 

Lincum had a furtive, excited look. He was 
trying to fix his father’s attention. “I told him 
you knowed dat old place. Hey?” he said. “You 
c’n tell him all ’bout it, can’t you? Hey? He 
axed me to come wid him last night, but I wa’n’t 
gwine to project on dis road in de dark, not atter 
seein’ dat ha’nt so nigh here; up on dat hillside. 
Um-mm! It was graveyard white; higher’n de 
trees; wid gre’t big green eyes!” 

For the first time the old man seemed to regard 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 205 

what his son was saying. He chanted over his 
last words: “Green eyes; gre’t green eyes; ghos’ 
white! Not on de hillside. Right here. I seed 
it.” 

So it was Solomon Gabe Dick had run upon 
that night he was playing “ha’nt!” He had been 
so startled by the sudden appearance and the old 
man’s face was so distorted by terror that he had 
not recognized him. Of course it was Solomon 
Gabe! 

The old negro was still speaking. “I seed it 
dat fust night I come to meet dat man. Right 
here. Down it went—clank-clankin’ like gallows 
chains—in de groun’; right whar yore foot is.” 

Lincum moved hastily. “I don’t like dis-here 
place,” he said. “An’ I don’t like dat white man. 

If de white folks ’round here finds out-Thar 

he is!” 

A man was coming down the road. It was Mr. 
Smith. 

“Come!” he said quickly. “Let’s get where 
we are to go. Some one might come and see us.” 

“Don’t nobody travel dis-here road but we-all 
colored folks an’ dat venturesome Dick Os¬ 
borne,” said Lincum. “An’ don’t nobody pester 
’round de place I tol’ you ’bout.” 

“Where is it?” Mr. Smith asked impatiently. 

“Up de hill a little piece,” replied Lincum. 



206 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Daddy knows all 'bout it. But his mind's 
mighty roamin' to-day. Looks like he's done 
tricked folks so much he’s gittin’ tricked hi'self." 

“Nonsense!" said Mr. Smith, sharply. “Here! 
Come, old coon! If you want that gallon bucket 
of money to open, you must do what I say." 

Mumbling to himself, “Money! money! 
money!" the old man took the lead and went up 
the path toward the Old Sterling Mine. 

Dick came from his hiding place and crept 
through the woods. The men were standing by 
the mine, talking earnestly in low tones. 

Had these negroes brought Mr. Smith here to 
seek its treasure? Gallon buckets of money! 
That was queer talk. He would go to Larkland 
and tell Cousin Mayo what he had heard. 


CHAPTER XIII 


A S Dick went up the hill, he saw on the 
porch a spot of blue with an expanse of 
white beside it,—Mrs. Osborne in blue 
gingham, with a dozen hospital shirts that she was 
basting, ready for machine work. 

Suddenly there was a commotion, a frightened 
fluttering and squawking among the fowls in the 
side yard. Mother hens were warning their 
young that a chicken hawk was near. It had 
alighted in a tall locust tree, ready to pounce on 
some defenseless creature. Mrs. Osborne rose 
quickly, but unhurriedly, went into the house, and 
reappeared in the door with an old shotgun. As 
the bird poised for its downward dive, she winged 
it with a quick, sure shot; it dropped in the midst 
of the young things that were to have been its 
prey. 

“Whew! that was a fine shot, Cousin Polly!” 
Dick said admiringly. “A hawk on the wing!” 

“I am glad to get the rascal,” Mrs. Osborne 
said quietly. “It has been raiding my poultry 
yard, and I was afraid it would get some of 
Mayo’s pigeons.” 


207 


208 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Where’s Cousin Mayo?” Dick asked, begin¬ 
ning to feel embarrassed as soon as he got over 
the thrill of the hawk-shooting. 

Mrs. Osborne always made the boys feel clumsy 
and untidy and ill at ease. She was as different 
as possible from her dark, rugged, merry hus¬ 
band. Everything about her was neat and prim 
and small. She had a pretty little mouth, a little 
thin nose, little round blue eyes; her fair glossy 
hair was plaited and coiled around her small well¬ 
shaped head. 

“Mayo has gone away,” she answered. “He 
may not come back to-night. Will you come in? 
Is there any message?” 

“No. No, thank you.” 

And Dick made his escape. 

After all, he was glad Cousin Mayo was not at 
home and he had not yielded to the impulse to tell 
the tale which would have involved the telling of 
his own secret. He would watch the mine him¬ 
self and find out if Mr. Smith and the two ne¬ 
groes were trying to get its treasure. 

At the mill Dick saw the mail hack coming 
from Redville and ran to get a ride. Jim 
Walthall, the driver, had news to tell. 

“Three of them drafted niggers from Charle- 
burg County run away from Camp Lee; deserted, 
by jinks!—Bill and Martin Toole from the lower 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


209 

end of the county and Caesar Gabe. They traced 
them to a freight train, and folks think maybe 
they come back here. Eve got printed descrip¬ 
tions of them, to put up at the post office. The 
sheriff’s on the search for them.” 

“Oh! I hope he’ll find them,” said Dick. 

“He won’t,” declared Jim. “Those fellows 
wouldn’t think of coming back here where every¬ 
body knows them; why, they’d be caught right 
away. No, they’ve gone to Richmond or New 
York, a city somewhere.” 

When Dick got home Anne and Patsy were 
sitting in the swing in the yard. 

“There’s Dick! He’s been ‘secreting’ again,” 
laughed Anne. 

“I’ve just come from Larkland,” Dick said 
shortly. “And at the mill I met-” 

They stopped swinging, and interrupted him 
before he could tell his news about the deserter. 

“Did you see him?” Patsy asked excitedly. 

“Isn’t it Kuno Kleist?” demanded Anne. 

“I just saw Cousin Polly. Cousin Mayo’s gone 
away.” 

“With Kuno Kleist, that German friend of 
his, the one he was in Mexico with. He was at 
Larkland. We saw him. And now Cousin 
Mayo’s gone away with him and-” 

Patsy pinched Anne’s arm. Mr. Jake Andrews 



210 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


was coming up the walk, was, in fact, close to 
them before any one saw him. On being told 
that Mr. Osborne was not at home, he turned 
and went away. 

“I’m sure he heard me, and I’m awful sorry,” 
Anne said. “It’s a secret, Dick, for Cousin Mayo 
didn’t-” And then she told the whole story. 

“Oh, well! What you said didn’t make any 
difference,” said Dick. “Jake doesn’t know what 
you were talking about; he wouldn’t care if he 
did.” And then he told them about the deserters. 

Anne and Patsy and Dick would have been 
dismayed if they could have followed Jake An¬ 
drews. He left The Village and went straight 
along the Redville road to the old Tolliver place. 
He gave a shrill whistle, and a minute later Mr. 
Smith sauntered out of the back door toward a 
clump of trees on a hillock. Andrews cut across 
the field and joined him on the wooded eminence 
where they were secure from observation. 

“It’s like you said, Smittie,” declared An¬ 
drews; “them dog-gone old ’ristocrats need 
watching. Black Mayo Osborne knows a Ger¬ 
man spy”—Smith started violently—“friends 
with him, staying in his house. Them gals saw 
him; that German he was with down in Mexico.” 

Mr. Smith had regained his composure. “He’s 
there, you say?” 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


211 


“Gone now; that mischeevious Dick Osborne 
was at Larkland after the gals was there. The 
man’s gone away, and Black Mayo with him.” 

Mr. Smith knit his brows. “To have known 

this before! What the devil-” He looked at 

Jake Andrews and adjusted his face and words. 
“You have acted with the wisdom and patriotism 
in coming to me. It is service to Government. 
And there are rewards; much money. But it is 
of the most importance that you keep cemetery 
stillness.” He paused and his lips writhed and 
set themselves in a hard, cruel line. Then he 
said: “We shall not be surprised now to hear of 
the outrages. But what happens, keep you si¬ 
lence except to me.” 

The week went by quietly, in spite of Mr. 
Smith’s prediction. Black Mayo came home,, 
without a word about his guest or his journey, 
and went here and there more busily than ever 
with his pigeons for trial flights. 

And then things did happen. 

The Home Guard at Redville had received or¬ 
ders months before to patrol the high bridge over 
which troops and supplies were constantly pass¬ 
ing on their way to Camp Lee or to Norfolk. 
Day and night the youths in khaki paced to and 
fro, with guns on their shoulders. And then— 
what a thrill of horror it sent through the com- 



212 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


munity!—one of the bridge guards was killed. 
The shot came from the heart of a black, rainy 
night that hid the criminal. He went free, ready 
to strike again—where? whom?—at any minute. 
Was it one of the deserters? Probably not. 
Their one aim would be to “lay low” and avoid 
arrest; and probably they were far away; the 
community had been thoroughly searched with¬ 
out finding them. 

A few days after the bridge guard was killed, 
Sweet William came running from the mill in 
great distress. 

“IPs poisoned, mother!” sobbed the little fel¬ 
low. “There’s glass in it; the flour we were 
saving for the Belgians.” 

“What’s the matter, dear? What is it,, Patsy?” 
exclaimed Mrs. Osborne. 

“It’s so, mother,” cried Patsy. “Oh, mother! 
Cousin Giles found glass in a lot of flour. Some 
one got in and put glass there, to poison it; in 
our mill, our own mill here at Larkland.” 

The finding of glass in flour at Larkland mill 
was the one subject of conversation in The Vil¬ 
lage that Saturday night. And on Sunday—a day 
that in the little Presbyterian town seemed stiller 
and sweeter than other days—people stood in 
troubled groups at the church door, discussing 
the matter. The minister even referred to it in 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 213 

his prayer—not directly,, that would have been 
regarded as irreverent—but with the veiled 
allusions considered more acceptable to the 
Almighty. 

Glass in flour at the mill, Larkland mill! 
The people resented it with a vehemence that 
would have puzzled outsiders. Larkland mill 
was not merely a mill. It was one of the oldest, 
most honored, most loyal members of the com¬ 
munity. As the quaint inscription on its wall 
said, “This mill was finished building by Hugh 
Giles Osborne his men, 8 June, in year of our 
Lord 1764, ye third year of his gracious majesty 
King George III.” On its oaken beams were 
marks of the fire set to it by Tarleton’s men be¬ 
cause that Hugh Giles Osborne’s sons were fight¬ 
ing side by side with Washington. Nearly a 
century later, soldiers in blue marching from 
Georgia had taken toll of its stores. And then 
Colonel Osborne, coming back in defeat to pov¬ 
erty, had laid aside his Confederate uniform and 
become a miller, as his son was to-day. 

Larkland mill had served the whole community 
in peace and war, and it was loved with a per¬ 
sonal feeling. Had not the children even had 
a birthday party in its honor at Happy Acres, not 
so long ago ? For it to deal out poison was like 
a father’s giving it to his children. 


214 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Not that the mill was to blame. Of course not. 

Who could have taken advantage of it and put 
glass in its flour? No one could even guess. 
Mr. Spotswood had not seen any suspicious 
person around—only the usual frequenters of the 
mill, which included all the men of the com¬ 
munity, white and black. The evildoer, a 
stranger and an outsider of course, must have 
come in the shielding twilight or the covering 
night. Nothing easier. The mill was near the 
highway; the doors stood wide open all day, and 
shutting them at night was a mere matter of 
form; there were a dozen easy ways of ingress. 

Day after day passed and brought no trace of 
the criminals. There was a growing feeling of 
uneasiness throughout the community. Whis¬ 
pers went about, tales circulated among the 
Village loafers, the source and foundation of 
which no one could give, but which were repeated, 
at first doubtingly; but they were told over and 
over again and gained credence with each repe¬ 
tition until they were believed like gospel truth. 
These tales were about Black Mayo and his guest. 

Dick was in the back room of Mr. Blair’s store 
one morning, picking over apples to pay for some 
candles. He was daydreaming about the mine, 
and at first was only conscious of voices in the 
front room, without really hearing the conversa- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


215 

tion. But presently he heard Mrs. Blair ask 
excitedly,, “Agnes, have you heard these shame¬ 
ful tales about Black Mayo?” 

Shameful tales about Cousin Mayo! Dick 
listened now. 

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Wilson. 

“People are saying-Oh, Will! tell her. I 

am too furious to talk!” 

“Jake Andrews is accusing Mayo of being dis¬ 
loyal, a suspicious character that ought to be 
watched, arrested.” 

“Mayo watched, arrested! Mayo! Jake An¬ 
drews accuses him! And, pray, who is Jake 
Andrews?” 

“A common fellow from the upper end of the 
county, who schemed to keep his sons out of the 
draft. This Andrews and some other fellows 
went to Larkland and actually asked Mayo about 
a guest of his and what his business was. Mayo 
refused to tell, and when Andrews persisted, 
why, he settled the matter-” 

“'Settled the matter/ how?” asked Mrs. 
Wilson. 

“Knocked him down, of course. That was all 
right. The idea of Andrews catechizing him! 
It was infernally insolent.” 

“I wonder he dared do it,” said Mrs. Blair. 

“Oh! The fellow is a justice of the peace or a 




2 l6 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


deputy sheriff or some sort of little officer,” con¬ 
ceded Mr. Blair. “It seems that Andrews has 
been sneaking around, watching Mayo. And he’s 
found out, he claims, that Mayo has been harbor¬ 
ing an enemy alien, a German-” 

“I don’t believe any one at all has been there,” 
said Mrs. Blair. 

“So the thing has gone on, but-” Mr. 

Blair paused and frowned. 

“But what?” asked Mrs. Wilson. 

“Why doesn’t Mayo explain?” he exploded. 
“I gave him the opportunity, deuce take it! I 
was so sure he would make it all right that I 
brought up the subject yesterday when there was 
a crowd here in the office, waiting for the mail. 
But instead of saying where he went or who his 
guest was—I’m a Dutchman if he didn’t walk 
out of the office without a word!” 

“And that makes it worse than if you had not 
given him the chance to explain,” said Mrs. 
Wilson. 

“Of course. But I was so sure of him,,” said 
Mr. Blair. Then he asked impatiently: “Why 
doesn’t he tell where he goes and why?” 

“Because he doesn’t want to,” said Mrs. Blair. 
“He thinks people haven’t any right to ask, and 
so he won’t tell.” 

“But he ought to tell,” said Mr. Blair. “Of 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


217 

course it’s all right; we know that. But some 

people- Dog-gone it!” he said vehemently. 

“I wish I had knocked Andrews down when he 
came drawling his 'suspicions’ to me. I will beat 
the scoundrel to a pulp if he comes in my store 
with another question. Of course Mayo’s all 
right.” 

"Of course!” said his wife, more vehemently 
than absolute certainty required. “I—I wonder 
why—what—he wouldn’t tell you.” 

"Whatever Black Mayo does is right,,” Mrs. 
Wilson said serenely. "He has some good reason 
for silence.” 

"Of course!” "Of course!” Mr. and Mrs. 
Blair said, avoiding her eyes and each other’s. 

"I know about it,” Dick thought, with a thrill 
of pride. "It is all right. It was Kuno Kleist.” 
Kuno Kleist! He remembered with dismay Mr. 
Blair’s words, "A German, an alien enemy he’s 
concealing.” Why, that was what Kuno Kleist 
was, and for his Cousin Mayo to hide him was 
not "all right,” in the eyes of the law, but a crime. 
"They’ll never find out from me,” said Dick to 
himself, gritting his teeth. "I’ll be hanged and 
drawn and quartered, like men in 'The Days of 
Bruce,’ before I’ll tell anything to get Cousin 
Mayo in trouble.” 

"Black Mayo feels—oh! we know how he 



218 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


feels,” said Mrs. Wilson. “But in these times 
there are things we owe to ourselves, and to 
others. Mayo ought to tell about his perfectly 
proper journeys and perfectly proper guest, and 
I am going to ask him.” 

“Agnes!” 

“I know. I never thought I would interfere, 
would ask a question about any one’s private 
affairs,” she said. “But I can’t help it. I am 
going to do it. I must. Black Mayo suspected 
of treason! Black Mayo that we’ve known and 
loved all our lives! Why, it is as if some one 
should say my Ruth was a thief.” 

Mrs. Wilson was not one to postpone a dis¬ 
agreeable duty. She put on her bonnet and 
gloves and started at once to Larkland. It was 
a path familiar to her childish feet. How often 
she, like her own child, had roamed about this 
dear, quiet country—playing in the mill, roaming 
about Larkland, fishing in Tinkling Water. 
Miranda and Giles Spotswood, Anne Mayo, 
Polly Spencer, Beverley Wilson, and Red and 
Black Mayo Osborne had been her comrades; 
Black Mayo, the leader in all their sports,, was 
the chum of Beverley Wilson whom she married 
the very June that Black Mayo married Polly 
Spencer. The friendship of early days had lasted 
and deepened with the years. It was stronger 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 219 

than the tactful habit of never asking personal 
questions. 

She found Polly Osborne on the porch, busy, 
as usual, with Red Cross sewing. She dropped 
her work and set a comfortable chair in a pleas¬ 
ant corner of the porch while she called greet¬ 
ings to the approaching visitor. “How good of 
you to brave the heat and come to see me!” she 
said. “Here is a fan. Take off your bonnet. 
I’ll get you a glass of raspberry vinegar. It is 
so refreshing on a warm day!” 

Mrs. Wilson put a protesting hand on her arm. 
“Don’t, Polly. I can’t sit down, not now. Where 
is Mayo? I want to see him—about something 
important.” 

“Mayo? I reckon he’s in the garden. He has 
some pigeons there in the old summerhouse. I’ll 
find him and tell him you want to see him.” 

“No, please, Polly. Let me go there and speak 
to him. Then I will come back and see you.” 

“Certainly; just as you wish,” said Mrs. Os¬ 
borne. “You know the way—all the ways here 
—as well as I do.” 

Mrs. Wilson went along the flagstones across 
the yard, through the garden gate, down the box¬ 
wood-bordered walk. She turned across the 
huge old garden to the summerhouse embowered 
in microfila and Cherokee roses, with their dark 


220 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


foliage starred with creamy blossoms. She 
heard a merry voice whistling “Dixie,” the only 
tune that Black Mayo had ever mastered. There 
he was in overalls, hard at work, putting up boxes 
for nests. 

“How do you do,, Mayo?” she said, speaking 
before he saw her. 

He dropped his hammer and caught both of 
her hands in his. 

“I wished you on me,” he said gleefully. “I 
was thinking so hard about the rainy days when 
we children used to play here! I found a box 
with some of our dominoes in that closet when 
I was clearing it out to make a place to keep feed 
for my pigeons. Don’t you remember-” 

“I remember everything, Mayo,” she inter¬ 
rupted, with her lovely clear eyes meeting his, 
“from the mud-pie days to the generous sending 
of your books when mine were burned. And be¬ 
cause I do, I have come to ask you some questions. 
Who was your guest three weeks ago? Where 
did you go, on what business, when you left home 
with him?” 

He looked her straight in the eyes. “You ask, 
Agnes-” 

He hesitated and she took up his words. “I 
ask, Mayo, about your private affairs”—her 
voice did not falter, but her cheeks flamed—“be- 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


221 


cause people are saying things about you that 
I—we—want you to disproved 

“Oh!” he said sharply. Then he dropped his 
voice and his eyes, and answered: “I—I can’t do 
it, Agnes.” 

“Mayo!” she exclaimed. There was a little 
silence. Then she said, “Oh, Mayo!” in a tone 
that implored him to answer. 

He looked away. “If you were asking me for 
yourself, Agnes,” he said, “I—I ought not, but 
I might—probably I should—tell you.” 

“I do not ask for myself,” she said. “I trust 
you utterly. If there were one little doubt in the 
thought of my heart, I could not come to you with 
this question.” 

“A question I must leave unanswered,” he said 
with a wry smile. 

“Oh, no,, Mayo!” she said. “You know I don’t 
wish to force your confidence, but it seems to me 
that when people ask—how dare they ask!—we 
have no right to refuse to prove our loyalty.” 

“Are they asking Giles Spotswood or Will 
Blair to prove theirs?” he inquired a little bit¬ 
terly. 

“They say—you can guess what they say, 
Mayo.” She could not make herself give words 
to their suspicions. 

“Oh, yes!” he answered quickly. “I know. 


222 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


They’ve been questioning me about Kuno Kleist, 
my friend in Mexico. Being a German, he was 
probably a Prussian; being a Prussian, he was 
probably sent by the kaiser to incite the Mexicans 
against the United States; being a German and 
a Prussian and the kaiser’s emissary, he prob¬ 
ably perverted me. Good reasoning! 

“And they want to know about my comings 
and goings. My old absent days rise up and 
damn me with my dear stay-at-home county 
people. And I’ve had a guest and I’ve taken a 
few little trips and I haven’t put a bulletin in the 
post office to say who and where and why. And 
so they want me to explain. I can’t explain.” 
His voice grew harsh and he laughed mirthlessly. 
“Let them roll their doubts and suspicions like 
sweet morsels under their tongues.” Then his 
voice softened. “It was like you, Agnes, to come 
to me in the spirit of our old loyal friendship, and 
I thank you-” 

She put out her hand to stop him, turning away 
her head. She could not give him at that minute 
the sight of her grieved face. 

“Don’t, Mayo,” she said unsteadily. “Not 
‘thanks’ between us. You—you understand why 
I came. I—I am sorry-” 

She walked slowly back across the fair, fra¬ 
grant garden, taking time to get control of herself 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


223 

before she went through the gate and along the 
flagged walk and around the house corner. There 
was Polly on the porch, still busy with her sew¬ 
ing. Mrs. Wilson compelled herself to sit down 
and chat a few minutes about gardens and fowls 
and Red Cross work. Then she said good-by 
and started home. 

Near the mill she met Dick Osborne and he 
looked at her with eager eyes. Then his face 
fell. Cousin Mayo had not told her; Dick was 
sure of that as soon as he saw her face. Why 
not? It must be a tremendous secret if Cousin 
Mayo couldn’t tell Cousin Agnes—and she ask¬ 
ing him to! He remembered uneasily the con¬ 
versation that Jake Andrews had overheard; he 
was sorry that fellow had happened to come along 
just then. He must tell Anne and Patsy to keep 
their lips glued up. Alas! It was too late now for 
caution. The secret was out. 


CHAPTER XIV 


C OUSIN POLLY dear,” called Anne 
Lewis, tripping up the Larkland path a 
few days later, “here’s the wool you said 
you’d need to-day. And where is Cousin Mayo? 
David wants to know if he’ll lend us a wagon 
Saturday, to haul up our potatoes.” 

“Mayo will let David know about it. He is 
away from home now,” said Mrs. Osborne, in her 
quiet voice. 

“Those pigeons keep him on the go,, don’t 
they?” said Anne. 

Mrs. Osborne answered only with a smile. 
“Come, dear; sit down,” she said. “Stay to 
dinner.” 

“No, thank you, Cousin Polly. We want to 
can a lot of butterbeans to-day,” said Anne. 
“I’ll just run to the kitchen and say 'howdy’ to 
Chrissy; I haven’t seen her for a long time.” 

Anne went to the kitchen, which, according to 
Village custom,, was a cabin back of the dwelling 
house, and stopped at the door. 

“Well, Chrissy, how are you?” she said pleas¬ 
antly. 


224 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 225 

The old woman, usually good-humored and 
talkative, turned a glum face toward her young 
visitor. “Uh! I ain’t nothin’ to-day,” she 
groaned. “ ’Scuse me a minute, Miss Anne. I 
got to git a dish out de dinin’ room.” She went 
out of the back kitchen door and took the long 
way around to the house. 

“Goodness, Chrissy!” Anne said when she 
came back. “Why did you go that roundabout 
way? Why didn’t you come out this door?” 

Chrissy looked around, and then said in a cau¬ 
tious undertone, “Miss Anne, dat doorstep’s 
cunjered.” 

“Cunjered!” laughed Anne. 

“Cunjered,” Chrissy repeated solemnly. “Solo¬ 
mon Gabe was here yestiddy. He toP Miss Polly 
he come to bring her shoes dat Lincum patched, 
but I knows better. He come grumblin’ an’ 
mumblin’ ’roun’ here; an’ he was puttin’ a spell 
on dat step, dat’s what he was doin’.” 

“What kind of spell?” asked Anne, still mirth¬ 
ful. 

“A spell to hurt me, Miss Anne; to give me a 
misery, maybe to kill me, if I tromp on it.” 

“But I came in this door and it didn’t hurt me,” 
said Anne. 

“Naw’m. It can’t hurt you, ’cause ’t wa’n’t 
laid in yore name. ’T was put dar for me.” 


226 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Why do you think Solomon Gabe—he looks 
mean enough for anything!—put a spell for 
you?” 

“He’s mad with me, Miss Anne. I—I can’t 
tell you de why an’ de wherefore. Dey say de 
birds o’ de air will let ’em know if I tell any¬ 
thing. Miss Anne, don’t you breath what I 
done said.” The old woman groaned. “Uh, 
dese is trouble times, trouble times! Who is 
dem folks cornin’ up de walk, Miss Anne? Dey 
ain’t de kind o’ folks dat come visitin’ to Lark- 
land.” 

Anne had joined her Cousin Polly in the hall 
when the three rough, loud-talking men—Jake 
Andrews, Bill Jones, and Joe Hight—came 
stamping up the front steps. Mrs. Osborne met 
them with the cordiality that a Virginia country 
house has for any guest, even the unexpected 
and unknown. Wouldn’t they come in and let 
Chrissy bring them some fresh water? She was 
sorry her husband was not at home. 

“We saw him go away,” said Andrews, shortly. 
“They said he was carrying pigeons to Rich¬ 
mond, to fly back home.” 

“Oh! Yes,” she said in a noncommittal way. 

“Was he?” asked Andrews, fixing his beadlike 
black eyes on her face. 

Anne saw her cousin flush; the rude manner of 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 227 

the men was enough to bring an indignant color 
to her cheeks. 

Mrs. Osborne hesitated a minute, then said 
quietly: “That is the way pigeons are trained. 
They are taken away hungry, and they fly back 
to the place where-” 

Andrews cut short her explanation. “How 
fast do they fly?” 

“My husband had a bird come six hundred 
miles last week,” she said. “It made that flight 
in fifteen hours.” 

“H’m! What made you think so—that it came 
in that time?” 

“Oh! my husband knows all his birds. And 
there is always a note fastened to the leg, telling 
where it came from and where it is going, so if 
any one catches it he will turn it loose to finish 
its flight.” 

“Ah!” said Andrews. “If a pigeon was com¬ 
ing from Richmond, it would be here now. We’ll 
see if any of them have notes fastened to their 
legs, to prove what you say.” 

Mrs. Osborne’s eyes blazed in her white face. 
“What have you to do with my husband’s birds?” 
she demanded. 

“What I please, with him and them,” answered 
Andrews, throwing back his coat and showing a 
badge. “I’m an officer of the law, I am. And 



228 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


I’m dog-tired of the old ’ristocrats that been 
running Charleburg County, and ain’t no better 
than other folks—and friends with Germans, in 
all sorts of meanness. Now, ma’am, are you 
ready to prove what you said about them pig¬ 
eons?” 

There was a brief silence. Mrs. Osborne’s 
face went from white to red and back again. At 
last she said quietly: “You need not wait, gentle¬ 
men. No birds will come home to Larkland 
to-day. There are none to come. My husband 
did not take them with him.” 

“Where did he go?” demanded Andrews. 
“And who’s that strange man that’s been here 
with him?” 

“I refuse to answer your impertinent ques¬ 
tions,,” she said, looking over his head. “Gentle¬ 
men, I bid you good day. Come, Anne.” 

She marched like a royal procession through 
the hall, with Anne following her. They went 
into the sitting room, and Mrs. Osborne, with 
a red patch on each cheek, sat stiffly erect in a 
straight-backed chair and talked to Anne, jump¬ 
ing from one subject to another—Red Cross 
work, war gardens, Mr. Tavis’s rheumatism, 
Miss Fanny Morrison’s new hat—anything and 
everything except the one subject she and Anne 
had in mind. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 229 

“Which of your studies do you like best? ,, she 
asked. 

“Pigeons,” answered Anne. “Oh!” she gasped, 
and hastily said, “Math,” which she hated. 

Then, very embarrassed and puzzled and 
troubled, she went back to The Village. In the 
midst of her task and the merry chatter of her 
companions, her thoughts wandered often to that 
strange scene at Larkland. What did it, what 
could it mean ? There was evidently some secret; 
so she must not discuss it with any one, not even 
Patsy. But what? and why? 

By the middle of the afternoon, the task they 
had set themselves was finished. Anne went 
home with Patsy, and they dropped down on the 
shady lawn to enjoy their well-earned rest. 

“I’m thirsty!” said Anne. 

Patsy laughed. “That's the first time you've 
seemed to know what you were saying to-day!'' 
Then she called Emma, who brought fresh water, 
and filled and refilled for them the big old 
“house” dipper, a coconut shell rimmed with 
silver. 

“Oh, for some lemonade!” sighed Patsy. 
“Sweet and cold, with ice tinkling in the glass!'' 

“Hush! You make me so thirsty!” said Anne. 
“We could get the lemons at Cousin Will's store, 
but we ought not to use the sugar. Mr. Hoover 


230 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

says we must save more than we’ve been saving.’’ 

“Dat Mr. Hoover shore is stingy wid his 
sugar,” grumbled Emma. “How come folks let 
him have it all, anyway?” 

“He wants us to use less so there will be some 
for our Allies,” explained Anne. 

“H’m!” snorted Emma. “I’ve always been 
havin’ all de sugar I could buy an’ pay for. Why 
can’t dem ’Lies git on like dey always done?” 

Anne knew; she had read Mr. Hoover’s ap¬ 
peals. She said: “Our Allies used to get most of 
their sugar from Germany and Austria, the coun¬ 
tries we are at war with. Now they can’t get 
that, so we must divide with them the sugar from 
Louisiana and Cuba and the Hawaiian Islands.” 

“Wellum, course what you say is so; but I 
don’t believe a word of it,” said Emma. “An’ 
here Miss M’randa come this mornin’ an’ say I 
can’t have no sugar to make a cake for Sweet 
William’s birthday. Um, um, um! If my old 
man was livin’, he’d git sweetenin’ for dat cake 
an’ for you-all’s lemonade, too.” 

“How could he get sugar ?” asked Patsy. 

“I ain’t say sugar,” answered Emma; “I say 
sweetenin’. I was talkin’ ’bout honey.” 

“But we haven’t any honey,” said Anne. 

“He’d git it, Amos would. He was a powerful 
hand for findin’ bee trees.” 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 231 

“What is a bee tree?” “How did he find 
them?” asked Patsy and Anne. 

“Shuh, Miss Patsy! You-all know what a bee 
tree is. It’s a tree whar bees home an’ lay up 
honey.” 

“Oh, yes! But how can you find it?” inquired 
Anne. 

“My old man was a notable bee courser,” said 
Emma. “Dis here’s de way he done: He put 
some sirup on a chip an’ he took some flour-” 

“Flour! What for?” interrupted Patsy. 

“I’m a-tryin’ to tell you what for,” said Emma. 
“Well’m, he’d go wid dat chip, like out yander 
whar de bees is on dem white clover blooms; an’ 
thar he’d stand. Presen’ly de bees come an’ sip 
de sirup. Whiles a bee’s a-sippin’, Amos takes 
an’ dusts it wid de flour, and den he watches to 
see whichaway it goes. It flies ’long home,, an’ 
den comes back to git more sirup, an’ Amos he 
takes noticement how long it’s gone; dat gives 
him a sort o’ noration ’bout how fur off de tree 
is. Well, he follows Mr. Dusty-back fur as he c’n 
see it, an’ waits; an’ follows, an’ waits; takin’ 
de course twel he comes smang to de bee tree. An’ 
lawdy! de honey he got! We used to sell it, an’ 
give it ’way, an’ eat honey an’ honey cakes. 
Um-mm!” 

She smacked her lips reminiscently, 



232 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Oh, Patsy!” said Anne, and “Oh, Anne!” said 
Patsy; and then both together, “Let’s do it!” 

“Let’s go right away!” said Anne. 

Heat and fatigue were forgotten. They ran 
into the house,, and Anne scooped up a handful 
of flour while Patsy was getting sirup out of a 
preserve jar. They did not have enough confi¬ 
dence in the amiability of the bees to put the 
sirup on a chip; instead, they took a long stick, 
and Patsy held it with some trepidation while 
Anne stood by with the flour. 

“Dust that big one; that big fat one!” Patsy 
whispered excitedly. 

The bee buzzed and flirted its wings, and flew 
away from what must have seemed to it an 
avalanche of white dust. Anne and Patsy, on 
tiptoe to follow, watched eagerly to see the direc¬ 
tion of its flight. It circled aimlessly about, and 
then buzzed back to the clover blossoms. The 
girls selected another fat bee and dusted it liber¬ 
ally ; it flew off, buzzed about the clover field, and 
came back to sip the sirup. 

“It’s all nonsense!” Patsy said crossly. “Let’s 
give up.” 

“I don’t want to give up,” said Anne. “I 
reckon Amos did something Emma doesn’t know 
about. I wonder——” 

“We certainly can’t chase all the bees in the 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 233 

field,” said Patsy. “We might as well be trying 
to follow Dick. Come on! I want to scold Emma 
for sending us on a wild-goose chase.” 

“Wild-bee chase,” corrected Anne, laughing. 

Patsy was too warm and tired and cross to 
laugh. She went to the kitchen door and said 
sharply: “Emma, what made you tell us that 
foolishness about following bees to a tree? 
We’ve tried it, and the bees don’t go anywhere; 
they just buzz around on the clover and come 
back and eat some more sirup.” 

“Ump-mrn, Miss Patsy. You just ain’t done 
it right. Maybe you was coursin’ a bumbler or 
de wrong kind o’ bee.” 

“It was a honey bee. Don’t you reckon I know 
honey bees ?” Patsy replied indignantly. “Come 
out here and I’ll show you the kind it was. 
There! It was like that.” 

“Um-hmm! Dat big fuzzy-end bee; dat’s a 
droner. You’ve got to chase a honey-maker. 
Thar’s one, Miss Anne; dat little fellow. Dust 
it wid de flour. Now you follow it.” 

Ah! this little creature was no loitering drone. 
Instead of buzzing about the field, it took a 
straight, swift course, a “bee line,” to the north¬ 
east. Anne and Patsy followed as far as they 
were sure of its course, and then waited—waited 
what seemed a very, very long time,, and then 


234 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

dusted another honey-bee. A minute later, the 
first flour-coated little creature came flying back, 
to sip and fly away again. Again they followed, 
in growing excitement and glee. It led them 
across a field, through a swamp that they waded 
recklessly, across another field, and into woods 
where their progress was slow because they could 
see only a short distance ahead. They made up 
for it,, however, by dusting several bees, and at 
last they had a line of little messengers going in 
the same direction. 

They followed the swift-flying, busy creatures 
to—of all lovely, suitable places in the world— 
Happy Acres! Happy Acres, their dear garden 
plot in an old field surrounded by woodland. 
There was a big oak tree at the edge of that 
charming, beloved place, to which bees were 
coming from all directions. The girls forgot 
caution and ran close to the tree; there was a hole 
near the ground, and about eight feet up was a 
larger hole black with bees crawling in and out. 

“Listen, Patsy!” exclaimed Anne. “It’s hum¬ 
ming! the whole tree is humming like a beehive!” 

Oh, there was no doubt of its being a bee tree! 

They made their discovery a great sensation in 
The Village. Mr. Mallett, whose father had kept 
bees and who had a charm against stings, volun¬ 
teered to get the honey. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 235 

The Village turned out that evening to watch 
the performance. 

Mr. Mallett set to work calmly and like a vet¬ 
eran. He stopped the upper hole and started a 
smoldering fire of dry leaves and tobacco stalks 
near the lower opening. After the smoke stupe¬ 
fied the bees, he sawed and cut the upper hole, 
brushed aside the deadened bees by handfuls, and 
got out the honey stored in the great hollow tree; 
there were bucketfuls and bucketfuls of it. Anne 
and Patsy had a happy, important time dividing 
it among their friends and neighbors. 

“They’re welcome to the honey,” laughed 
Anne. “But, O Patsy! aren’t you glad you and I 
had the glory of finding the bee tree?” 

“That I am! And now hey for lemonade— 
cool, and tinkly with ice, and sweet, sweet, 
sweet!” rejoiced Patsy. 

“Oh, goody! we can’t send this to the Belgians 
and Frenches,” said Sweet William. “Anne, I 
wish you and Patsy’d find a bee tree every week. 
Then I wouldn’t mind saving all my sugar. 
Emma says she’s going to make me a cake, a real 
cake. And I am going to eat honey, and eat 
honey, and eat honey!” He heaved a sigh of 
blissful content. 

While Anne and Patsy were coursing the bees, 
Dick was on his way to the Old Sterling Mine. 


236 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

He had been there several times lately., looking 
about jealously to see if Mr. Smith were in¬ 
vestigating the mine. He had not seen any one 
there again, and he had about decided that Mr. 
Smith was looking over the timber in the Big 
Woods and had merely stopped to see the old 
mine as a curiosity. 

And so, on this pleasant autumn afternoon, 
Dick went up the hill from the creek, carefree and 
whistling merrily. Suddenly his tune changed to 
a sharp, dismayed exclamation, and he stopped 
to gaze at the ground; yes, there were footprints; 
and the tracks led—he followed swiftly and 
anxiously—to the mine opening. 

“They’ve been here! They’ve been back to my 
mine!” he exclaimed. 

Instead of pulling his improvised ladder from 
its hiding place beside the fence, he went to the 
mine hole and looked in. An old dead pine 
branch was hanging on the edge; it might have 
been tossed there by a gust of wind. Dick pulled 
it aside. It covered a ladder made of rough tim¬ 
ber. Some one had been in the mine; might be 
there now! 

Dick stood very still for several minutes, listen¬ 
ing intently and looking sharply around. Then 
he descended the ladder, with a shivery feeling 
that some one might tumble a rock or send a shot 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 237 

on him from above or drag him down by the legs 
or thrust a knife through him from below. 
Nothing happened. He descended safely, and the 
tunnel ahead of him was black and silent. He 
lighted his candle and went to the main room. 
The odor of stale tobacco smoke hung about the 
place and there were a few scraps of torn news¬ 
paper here and there. 

He went on toward the lower tunnel. At a 
sudden little noise, he jumped and put out his 
candle and stood on the alert. There was no 
glimmer in the murky darkness. All was still. 
The noise—if he had really heard any noise— 
was probably outside, the fall of a dead bough or 
the cawing of a crow. 

He relighted his candle and went on and set 
to work, but his spade made a horribly loud 
noise. He felt as if some one were listening; 
creeping down the tunnel; slipping behind him. 
Cold chills ran over him; he peered into the dark¬ 
ness outside his little circle of light; he dropped 
his spade and crouched behind a projecting 
rock. 

Oh, it was useless to try to work! He put his 
tools under a pile of old timbers and went back. 
Just as he was starting up the ladder, he noticed 
a pile of leaves between the foot of the ladder 
and the wall. It was not there the last time he 


238 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

was in the mine. He kicked the leaves aside. 
Under them was an old iron mortar and pestle. 

Something in the mortar glittered in the can¬ 
dle-light. Silver; silver, of course! Dick picked 
up some of the particles to examine. There was a 
little sharp pain and his finger began to bleed. 
Why, those particles were glass! And there were 
bottles and pieces of bottles. What on earth was 
any one doing here with a mortar and pestle, 
breaking up glass ? It was the strangest, silliest,, 

most absurd thing! Why, what- Oh, the 

glass in the flour at Larkland mill! Had Ger¬ 
mans, who put that glass in the flour, been hiding 
in the mine? Suppose they should come back 
and find him here! 

He hastily pushed the leaves over the mortar 
and climbed out. It never entered his head then 
to question how German strangers would know 
of this deserted place almost forgotten by the 
community. He sped down the path, through 
the woods, took the path to Larkland, and hurried 
to the hayfield where he saw Mr. Osborne at 
work. 

“Cousin Mayo!” Dick hardly had breath to 
speak. “I’ve been in the Old Sterling Mine and 
I found-” 

“Silver!” his cousin interrupted, in humorous 
excitement. 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


239 

“A mortar with broken glass in it. There were 
the pestle and some bottles. ,, 

"What!” exclaimed Black Mayo, the fun leav¬ 
ing his face and voice. 

"Some one had put a ladder in the hole. I 
found the mortar and pestle and bottles at the 
foot, covered with leaves. They weren’t there 
last week. Then I went down on my ladder.” 

"You may have got on the track of something 
of far more importance than the silver in or out 
of that old mine,” Mr. Osborne said, frowning 
thoughtfully. "Have you seen or heard any¬ 
thing else that might mean mischief, at any time? 
Think! and think!” 

"No, sir,” said Dick; then he exclaimed: "Oh, 
Cousin Mayo! I’d forgotten, but it was queer. 
The night before Broad Acres was burned, when 
Sweet William, was undressing, mother asked 
him how he got oil on his blouse, and he said he 
reckoned it was from the little smelly sticks he 
got under the steps at Broad Acres. And that 
night, Emma—she was standing by me—let out a 
screech, ‘The devils—burning little Miss Anne!’ ” 

"I wish you had told me these things before,” 
said Mr. Osborne. "Now, keep a still tongue and 
open eyes.” 

"I certainly will,” promised Dick. 


CHAPTER XV 


T HAT night Patsy was awakened by a 
hand on her arm, an excited voice in her 
ear. 

“Patsy, Patsy!” whispered Anne. “Wake up! 
Pve something to tell you. Wake up and listen. 
I can’t wait till morning. Oh, Patsy! I know 
how we are going to find out Dick’s secret!” 

“What? How?” Patsy was wide awake at 
once. 

“We’ve failed and failed; it did almost seem 
as if he could outdo us. Oh, he would have held 
it over our heads the rest of our lives!” 

“But how-” interrupted Patsy. 

“We—it came to me in a flash—we are going 
to course him,” said Anne. 

“Course him?” Patsy made the words an 
amazed question. 

“As we did the bees,,” Anne explained. “We’ll 
follow him as far as we can see him; and then 
we’ll take up his course from that place next 
time; and so on, till we get to Redville or the 
end of the world—wherever he goes!” 

“I don’t see how we’ll manage it,” said Patsy. 

240 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


24 1 

“Oh, yes you do! Or you will when I tell you 
from A, B, C to X, Y, Z,” Anne exclaimed im¬ 
patiently. “You see, Pats, we've got to watch 
him and follow him.” 

“We’ve tried that dozens of times,” was 
Patsy’s despondent interjection. 

“Will you listen to me? I say we’ll follow 
him. He nearly always goes by Larkland,, to get 
a pigeon; then he comes back to the public road 
and he goes up Jones’s hill. We know that, for 
we’ve followed him that far. Well! Next time 
we see him getting ready to go, we’ll stroll to the 
mill and stop, as if we just meant to visit Cousin 
Giles; then, while Dick’s at Larkland, we’ll run 
along and hide in the pines where he gave us the 
slip that first time. You remember?” 

Patsy emphatically did. 

“And then we’ll follow him. He’ll not be ex¬ 
pecting us there, and we’ll be careful to keep out 
of recognizing distance. If he gets away, we’ll 
come back home and not let him know we fol¬ 
lowed him. And the next time, we’ll race ahead 
and hide at the place where we lost sight of him, 
and follow him from there.” 

“Oh! I see!” said Patsy. “We are to course 
him just like the bees.” 

“Oh! you see; at last!” laughed Anne. “Maybe 
we’ll find out the very first time; or we may have 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


242 

to follow him again and again. Oh, it’ll be lots 
and loads of fun!” 

The girls were on tiptoe with impatience, and 
rejoiced mightily when they saw Dick put a 
candle into his pocket the next Saturday after¬ 
noon. They went at once to the mill; presently 
they saw him take the path to Larkland, and they 
ran ahead and dived into the pine woods where 
he had hidden on that well-remembered April 
day. Half an hour later, Dick came whistling 
along the road, and they crept from their hiding 
place and followed at a cautious distance for 
about three quarters of a mile; then they lost 
sight of him at a turn of the Old Plank Road. 
Anne stopped. 

‘‘Come on,” said Patsy, keen on pursuit. 
“There aren’t any paths here; of course he went 
on down the road.” 

“He may have turned off in the woods,” said 
Anne. “The thing to do is to course him, fol¬ 
low him as far as we see him. Oh, it’s such fun!” 

“It certainly is,” agreed Patsy. “We’ve fol¬ 
lowed him a long way. Why, we’re over two 
miles from The Village. It’s out here somewhere 
in the Big Woods that Solomon Gabe lives.” 

“Oh! the old ‘cunjer’ darky the others are so 
afraid of?” asked Anne. 

“Yes. And his son Caesar is one of the de- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


243 


serters they’re looking for. Oh, Anne! suppose 
we should walk up—zip, bang!—face to face with 
a real deserter?” 

“Nonsense! Everybody says those men went 
to New York or somewhere; they wouldn’t dare 
come back here, where people know them. Now, 
Pats-pet, next time Dick starts off, we’ll run 
ahead and come here and—oh, Patsy! that clump 
of chinquapin bushes will make a splucious hid¬ 
ing place.” 

“If he sees us, we can just be looking for chin¬ 
quapins. Anne, this was a splendid plan of 
yours.” 

“It certainly was,” agreed Anne. “Oh! I do 
hope next time we’ll get there—wherever it is— 
and find out Dick’s secret.” 

A few days later, they followed Dick again. 
He went toward Larkland, and they hid in the 
chinquapin bushes as they had planned. And 
there they stayed, weary hour after hour. No 
one passed except a negro man who went slinking 
down the road. 

“Anne,” whispered Patsy, “that man looks 
like—I believe it is—Caesar!” 

“Any darky you saw would look like Caesar to 
you,, now he’s a deserter,” giggled Anne. “You 
don’t see anybody that looks like Dick, do you?” 

“No; and don’t let’s wait any longer. We’re 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


244 

so crazy to find out about Dick we’re getting to be 
real slackers in Red Cross and gardening.” 

They “went by” Larkland, and there they 
found Dick, busy stretching wire and driving 
staples, helping Cousin Mayo wire in a new 
pigeon cote. 

The next Saturday was perfect outdoor 
weather, with blue skies and crisp air that in¬ 
vited one to the gorgeous October woodlands. 
Early in the afternoon, Anne, who was spending 
the day with Alice Blair, came running to The 
Roost. 

“Patsy! Patsy! Where's Patsy?” she called. 

“I sent her to carry Mrs. Hight some wool,” 
said Mrs. Osborne. “She’ll be back in an hour 
or so.” 

“Oh, dear!” Anne exclaimed. “I can’t wait. 
Tell her I’ve gone—she knows where—about the 
secret. Tell her to follow to the last place, 
please, Cousin Miranda. She’ll understand. I 
must run.” 

Away she sped, to pass the mill while Dick 
was at Larkland and get to the chosen covert on 
the Old Plank Road. Near the mill the mail 
hack passed her, with passengers that excited a 
sensation when they came to The Village. They 
were the sheriff and a deputy with two of the 
negro deserters, Bill and Martin Toole. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 245 

“Where d’you catch them?” asked Mr. Blair, 
neglecting his mail bags. 

“Not so far from you folks,” answered the 
sheriff. “Lewis Jones saw two men sneaking 
’round that old sawmill place in the Big Woods; 
he came and told me, and Tom Robson and me 
went and nabbed these fellows. We’ve brought 
them here to jail to-night; to-morrow we’ll de¬ 
liver them to army folks.” 

Just then Mrs. Red Mayo Osborne came in, 
hurried and anxious looking. 

“Will,” she called to Mr. Blair, “have you seen 
Anne Lewis this afternoon?” 

“Not since directly after dinner,” he answered. 
“She passed the post office then.” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Osborne. “She came run¬ 
ning in and asked for Patsy. Patsy was away, 
at the Hights’, and Anne ran off,, saying Patsy 
would know where she was going. As soon as 
Patsy came home, she followed, but she came 
back half an hour ago; she had looked and looked, 
and seen no sign of Anne—on the Old Plank 
Road, where she expected to find her.” 

“Anne ought not to wander off that way,” said 
Mr. Blair. 

“Indeed not,,” agreed Mrs. Osborne. 

“I’d send the boys to look for her,” suggested 
Mr. Blair. 


246 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“They’ve gone,” said Mrs. Osborne. “David 
and Steve and Dick. It’s Dick that made me so 
uneasy. When Patsy came back and found him 
at home, she asked him where Anne was. He 
said he hadn’t seen her. And Patsy said she had 
followed him, as far as the Old Plank Road, she 
was sure; and farther. He looked startled, posi¬ 
tively frightened. And he asked what color her 
dress was; and when I said blue, a blue gingham, 
he said, ‘Oh, I’m afraid I saw her!’ He was 
off like a shot before I could ask a question. He 
seemed so upset and excited that—well, it fright¬ 
ened me.” 

“Nonsense, Miranda!” laughed Mr. Blair. 
“You let your imagination run away with you. 
Anne ought not to roam the woods alone, but she 
is safe,, perfectly safe.” 

Dick had, as his mother said, gone hurriedly 
in search of Anne. He did not share Mr. Blair’s 
feeling of security; he was uneasy, alarmed. 

On his way to the Old Sterling Mine that after¬ 
noon, he had seen two negroes going up the path 
from the creek toward the mine. He crept into 
the bushes and followed a little way, but the 
undergrowth was so straggling that he could not 
get near them. One of the negroes was Solomon 
Gabe, he was sure; the other negro, a stout, 
youngish figure, had his back toward him and 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


247 

was screened by bushes. Dick caught only a 
word here and there of their mumbled speech— 
“hide,” “get away,” and oaths and oaths. 

He crept back to the road, and then, to avoid 
Isham Baskerfield whose oxcart was going up 
the hill, he went down the creek and cut through 
the woods. He ran to Larkland to tell his Cousin 
Mayo what he had seen and heard. The house 
was shut up. Perhaps he would find Cousin 
Mayo in The Village. 

And so Dick ran home—to be greeted by the 
news that Anne was off alone somewhere; had 
followed him, Patsy said, along the Old Plank 
Road. Then he remembered something that 
filled him with vague terror; if that were Anne, 
and she should wander to the Old Sterling Mine, 

and encounter those men- He turned and 

ran to seek her. It was nearly dark when he 
came to Isham’s cabin. The old negro was on 
the porch with his wife, who was talking in a 
rapid, excited voice. 

“Hey, Unc’ Isham!” Dick called. “Have you 
seen Anne?” 

The man started and the woman was suddenly 
silent. 

Dick called again; then he sprang over the 
fence and started toward the cabin. 

Lily Belle said something sharply to Isham, 



248 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

who turned and said: “Hey? Why, it’s little 
Marse Dick. Was you calling me?” and hobbled 
down the path. 

“Have you seen Miss Anne Lewis?” 

“See who? What you say, Marse Dick? 
Laws,, I’m gittin’ deef!” 

“Anne, Anne Lewis,” Dick said impatiently. 
“Which way did she go?” 

“How I know which way she go? I ain’t see 
her,” mumbled Isham. 

“What!” Dick said sharply. “I saw you go¬ 
ing up the road in your cart,, and she was there 
at the top of the hill—in a blue dress.” 

Isham looked terribly confused. Then he said: 
“Was that her? Was that Miss Anne? My old 
eyes ain’t no good nowadays. I knowed some¬ 
body passed me, but I was studyin’ ’bout my busi¬ 
ness, an’ I ain’t took no noticement who ’twas.” 

“But I thought she stopped and spoke to you,” 

said Dick. “It looked like- Didn’t she speak 

to you ?” 

As Dick became uncertain, Isham grew posi¬ 
tive. “Who? Miss Anne? I don’t riccermem- 
ber her speakin’ to me. Naw, Miss Anne ain’t 
spoke to me.” 

After all, Dick was not sure it was Anne. He 
had only seen a far-off figure in blue. He thought 
—he was not certain—it paused by Isham’s cart. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 249 

He had not thought of Anne then, but now the 
conviction grew that it was she; and he was curi¬ 
ously disturbed by Isham’s manner, though he 
was sure the old negro would not hurt Anne. 

Perhaps she had gone back, straying in the 
woods to get chinquapins, and was now safe at 
home.. Oh! surely she was at home. Twilight 
was deepening. He would go home. He started 
back, examining the road closely. There in the 
sand were footprints, slim little tracks, Anne’s 
footprints! 

So it was Anne that Isham had met. Why did 
he say he had not seen her? And why did he 
look so confused, frightened? 

All the tracks led in one direction. There were 
no homeward-going footprints. Anne had passed 
this way,, but she had not gone back. Where was 
she now? Did Isham know? 

Dick ran to the cabin. No one was in sight, 
and door and shutter were closed; but—for it was 
now dusk—he caught glimpses of flickering fire¬ 
light. He was just about to bang on the door 
when he heard a voice,—not Isham’s and not Lily 
Belle’s. He peeped through a knothole. There 
was a man sitting at the table. His back was 
turned. Dick crept to the side of the cabin and 
looked through a crack. Now Lily Belle was be¬ 
tween him and the man. Isham threw a light- 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


250 

wood knot on the fire and the blaze flared up. 
And Lily Belle moved. The man was Caesar 
Gabe, the deserter! 

This news ought to go at once to The Village. 
But Anne! He could not go back without one 
effort to find her. He ran down the road to the 
ford. There he stopped. After listening in¬ 
tently and hearing nothing but the usual wood 
noises, he took out the candle he had brought for 
his mining, lighted it, and looked about. There, 
on the soft, damp ground, the footprints were 
distinct; and they went, not up the road, but along 
the path toward the mine. 

Dick blew out the candle, squared his shoul¬ 
ders, and started up the hill. If Anne had gone to 
the Old Sterling Mine, if she had encountered the 
deserter— 

Close to the mine he lighted his candle and saw 
rough, heavy tracks and again that slim little 
footprint. 

Should he go into the mine to search for 
her? Or should he hurry back for help—not be¬ 
cause of the danger to himself, but because he 
only could guide aright the search for Anne; and 
to tell about the deserter. 

As he stood there., trying to decide what was 
best to do, he heard—he thought he heard—a 
faint cry. Anne? Was it Anne? Was she 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 251 

there, in terror, in danger? He forgot his sober 
second thoughts about going back for help. Anne 
there in need! He must go to her. 

He scrambled down the ladder and stumbled 
along the tunnel to the main room, not daring 
to light his candle. There was no glimmer in the 
darkness before him, and now he heard no sound; 
perhaps he had never heard anything, had just 
imagined he had. He lighted his candle and 
examined the ground, but he could not distin¬ 
guish footprints, Anne’s or others. Was he 
wasting precious time here, when he ought to be 
on the way home to give the alarm? 

Anyway, he would go on to the second tunnel. 

There, about the height of his head, was some¬ 
thing hanging on one of the rough timbers that 
supported the roofing. It was a piece of blue 
ribbon, the gay bow that he had seen on Anne’s 
hair. He sprang forward, in certainty and terror 
now, going straight to the pit at the end of the 
tunnel. He stumbled against something and al¬ 
most fell; it was the ladder that some one had 
pulled out of the pit. He pushed it to the edge, 
slid it in, and scrambled down. 

As he reached the bottom, his arm was 
clutched, so suddenly that his hand was jerked 
upward and his candle was extinguished. For a 
second he was frozen with terror, awaiting he 


THE OLD MINE'S SECRET 


252 

knew not what—a pistol at his brow, a knife at 
his throat 

And then to him, expecting any terrible thing, 
came a dear, familiar voice. “Oh, Dick! Dick!” 
gasped Anne. “I was so scared! I didn't dare 

look or move! And when I saw it was you- 

Oh! I thought no one would ever come. I thought 
they were coming back to kill me!” 

“They? Who?” 

“I don’t know. They threw a hat over my face 
from behind and blindfolded me. Then they put 
me here.” 

“Let's get away, quick as we can,” said Dick. 
“I saw two men here this afternoon. That’s why 
I went back.” 

They climbed out of the pit and hurried along 
the tunnel. 

Anne giggled hysterically. “O Dick!” she said. 
“I did find out your secret. I said I would, and 
I did. But—I wish I hadn't!” 

He started to answer, and then—they were 
now at the foot of the ladder—he stopped in 
terror. He heard voices. The men were re¬ 
turning. 

“They've got us,” he said. 

“Go on, go on,” gasped Anne. “Let's get out 
anyway.” 

“We'd just meet them,” replied Dick. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 253 

“Oh, come on out!” Anne said desperately. 
“Don’t let them kill us in this awful hole.” 

“A hole!” Dick exclaimed. “Oh! there’s one. 
Come here!” 

He caught Anne by the arm and pulled her 
along the tunnel, into the main room,, to the pit 
into which he had fallen on his first visit to the 
mine. 

“Here’s a hole,” he explained in a rapid whis¬ 
per; “behind this pile of dirt. Wait a sec till I 
move these poles. Now! Grab that pole and slip 
in. Feel for the log with your feet. There!” 

Instead of following Anne, he poised on the 
crosswise timber. 

“Hold the candle a minute,” he said. “Quick! 
And steady!” 

He dragged back the poles he had pulled aside. 

“Put out the light,” he said. “I’ll stay here 
and watch. If they don’t step on the poles, they’ll 
never find us.” 

“Oh, Dick! If-” 

“Hush! They’re coming!” 

They crouched down in silence, listening fear¬ 
fully to the footsteps and voices that came nearer 
and nearer. Three men, the foremost one carry¬ 
ing a lantern, stopped in the main room of the 
mine. Dick saw them clearly; they were Solo¬ 
mon Gabe, Caesar, and Isham. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


254 

Solomon Gabe was moaning over and over: 
“Uh, my boy! Dey’ll git you,, dey’ll git you! My 
boy! my boy!” 

Caesar spoke with impatient harshness: “Shet 
up! Is all yore senses wandered off, so you can’t 
see nothin’ but chain gangs an’ gallowses? I 
tell you, I’m goin’ to git off. If you’d got any 
spondulix from dat white man dat said he had 

gallon tin buckets o’ money- Well, I’m gwine 

in dat post office to-night. I’m bleeged to have 
money. Den dat daybreak train.” 

“What you drug me here for?” asked Isham’s 
frightened voice. “I got nothin’ to do wid you 
an’ yore desertin’. You come to my house an’ 


“You reckon I was gwine to stay here an’ 
starve?” snarled Caesar. 

“An’ makin’ me tell dat lie ’bout not seein’ 
Miss Anne,” grumbled Isham. “When dey finds 
out-” 

“If you tell on me I’ll kill you, if it’s my last 
livin’ act,” Caesar said fiercely. 

“Uh, I ain’t gwine to tell; I ain’t nuver gwine to 
tell,” promised Isham, hastily. “But it don’t need 
me. Thar’s Miss Anne. What c’n you do to-” 

“Kill her,” said Caesar. 

“Uh, my boy! my boy! Trouble! trouble!” 
moaned his father. 






THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


255 

“Caesar! Caesar!” Isham’s voice was shocked 
and deprecating. 

“Killin’ is saftest,” insisted Caesar. “If you- 
all’s feered, leave it to me.” 

“Naw! naw!” protested Isham. “Boy, if you 

do a killin’- I know dese here white mens. 

Dey’re mighty soft an’ easy-goin’ long as you 
don’t make ’em mad. But if harm comes to dat 
gal, dey’ll grub thar way down to hell wid thar 
bare hands to git de man dat done it. You’ll 
nuver git away. I—I’ve heerd bloodhounds 
run,” he quavered. 

Caesar cowered. “You want to turn her loose, 
to start a search an’ git me cotch ?” he asked sul¬ 
lenly. 

“Naw. Just left her in dat hole awhile,” said 
Isham. “She don’t know yore name or nomerna- 
tion. An’ ’fore folks find her, you’ll be gone.” 

Caesar thought it over. “Well,” he agreed. “If 
she stays thar two-three days—-— Le’s take a 
look ’round to make shore thar ain’t no way she 
c’n climb out.” 

“Thar wa’n’t nothin’ but de ladder, an’ you 
done took it out,” said Isham. 

“Le’s make shore. If she come here to de 
openin’, folks mought hear her.” 

Caesar, followed by Isham and Solomon Gabe, 
went down the tunnel toward the pit. 




256 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Anne clutched Dick’s arm. “They’ll miss me 
and find us here,” she whispered. “Let’s get out. 
Let’s run.” 

“Too near. Not time enough. Sh-sh!” Dick 
answered hurriedly. 

Even then the negroes were coming back, in 
great excitement. 

“Who put dat ladder thar? Who got her out?” 
Isham was saying wildly over and over. 

“Come on!” Caesar was urging, between oaths. 
“We got to ketch her ’fore she gits to de Village. 
Hit’s her life now; or mine!” 

“Yas, yas! An’ I’ll stan’ by you!” Old Solo¬ 
mon Gabe ended with an awful, sobbing shriek. 

Anne and Dick, cowering in the hole, felt as if 
wild, bloodthirsty beasts were on their trail. The 
fierce voices, the hurrying feet were close at hand. 
But they passed by. They went toward the 
ladder. And then voices and footsteps died away 
in the distance. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A S the voices died away,, Dick sprang up and 
pushed aside the poles. 

“Come on, Anne!” he said. “Here! 
Take my hand. Now! We must get home— 
quick!” 

“Oh, Dick! What if they come back? What 
if we meet them?” 

“We’ll not meet them,” he answered. “They’re 
going to The Village, looking for you. And he’s 
planning to rob the post office. He may shoot 
Cousin Will. We must hurry and let them know 
at home.” 

He took Anne’s hand and they groped through 
the tunnel and into the mine opening. 

“Why, it’s night!” Anne whispered. 

“Late,” said Dick. “It was dark when I came. 
The moon’s up.” 

They crept up the ladder. Dick put his hand 
on Anne’s arm and they stood still a minute, 
straining their eyes and ears into the woodland 
night. Above the whir and chirp of insects and 
the murmur of the little stream,, they heard a 
trampling on the hillside; no voices. 

257 


258 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Suppose just Caesar and Isham have gone 
on?” whispered Anne, terrified. “Suppose that 
awful old man is waiting to grab us ?” 

“Oh, no!” Dick tried to soothe her; then he 
warned her: “Don’t talk. Listen. And be on 
the lookout.” 

They went cautiously down the path, starting 
whenever a twig cracked or a pebble rolled under¬ 
foot. Now and then they stopped to listen and 
peer ahead. Thus they went on—across the 
creek, along the path, on the Old Plank Road, up 
the hill by Isham’s cabin. 

The door was open, and by the brilliant blaze 
of the lightwood knots on the hearth Anne and 
Dick saw Lily Belle moving restlessly about. She 
came to the door and peered out; but she did not 
see the two figures that slipped past in the dark¬ 
ness and hurried along the Old Plank Road to the 
highway. 

At the path that turned off to the mill and Lark- 
land, Anne caught Dick by the arm. “Wait, 
Dick!” she said. 

“We haven’t time to stop,” he said impatiently. 
“Come on!” 

“But, Dick,” she said, “I’ve been thinking- 

Suppose they’re watching. If we go the straight 
road home, they’ll be sure to catch us.” 

“It’s a chance we’ve got to take, to get home to 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


259 

tell them/’ he said. “I must. Do you want 


“If we turn off here and go to Larkland,” said 
Anne, “we can tell Cousin Mayo. He’ll know 
what to do. It isn’t much farther this way, and 
it’s a million times safer.” 

“Righto!” agreed Dick, turning into the path. 
“I’d been wondering if we’d get past them.” 

They hurried along the path through the woods 
and splashed through Tinkling Water, not taking 
time to grope for the stepping-stones. The mill 
loomed before them, a huge,, dark shadow on 
the shadows. 

Dick and Anne ran along the road to Lark- 
land. Presently they heard horse’s hoofs clat¬ 
tering down the road. There was a pause at the 
big gate, and a familar voice said,, “Steady, 
Rosinante, steady!” as the rider bent to open the 
gate. 

“Cousin Mayo! Cousin Mayo!” cried Dick 
and Anne, running toward him. 

“Hey! Who’s there?” he called sharply. 

“It’s just us,” said Anne; and Dick said, 
“Anne and me.” 

“Anne!—here at this time of night! Why, 
everybody in The Village is distracted about you. 
Get on Rosinante behind me. I’ll take you to The 
Roost.” 



260 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“Cousin Mayo-” 

“Who’s that with you? Dick? Is this one of 
your fool pranks ?” 

Mr. Osborne’s indignation for the instant 
dominated his relief. The search for Anne had 
been growing hourly in intensity and uneasiness. 
After walking about for hours, he had come 
home to get his horse, and was starting off again. 
And here the girl for whom the community was 
searching came strolling up the road to Larkland. 

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” he ex¬ 
claimed. 

“We were afraid to go home,” said Anne. 
“They are looking for me.” 

“Of course we are looking for you,” Black 
Mayo said impatiently. “They are horribly un¬ 
easy about you.” 

“I mean, Caesar’s looking for me,” Anne ex¬ 
plained in a hurried, scared undertone. “The de¬ 
serter!” 

“What!” 

“They put her in the Old Sterling Mine. I 
found her,” said Dick. 

“We thought we’d better tell you about it. I 
ran up on that deserter, and he’s afraid I’d tell. 

They’re looking for me, and- Oh! what’s 

that?” Anne gave a stifled cry. The noise 
that she heard was only—as she realized on the 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 261 

instant—the crackling fall of a dead bough, but 
it left her white and quivering. 

“Here, here!” said Black Mayo. “Let’s know 
what this is all about.” 

He sprang from his horse, threw the bridle 
rein over the gatepost, and led Anne up the walk 
and into the house. 

“Why, Mayo! I thought you were gone. 
Anne! Where did you find her, Mayo? And 
what is the matter?” asked Mrs. Osborne, as they 
hurried into the room where she was sitting. 

There was no direct answer to her questions. 
Mr. Osborne put Anne in a big chair and knelt 
down before her, grasping her cold, trembling 
hands. “Tell me what happened. Quick!” he 
commanded. 

“I feel as if they are peeping in,” Anne said 
with a shuddering glance at the windows. 

Mrs. Osborne drew the curtains close, and she 
and her husband listened with exclamations and 
quick questions to the girl’s story. As Mr. Os¬ 
borne listened and questioned he was moving 
about—taking firearms out of a closet, loading a 
gun with buckshot, oiling and loading a revolver, 
getting out boxes of shells and cartridges. 

“They didn’t see you,” he said; “they don’t 
know where you are—or you wouldn’t be here. 
Polly, you and Anne and Dick go into the chim- 


262 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


ney room-” He nodded toward a small room 

opening out of the sitting room, and called “the 
chimney room” because it was only the width of 
the big old chimney. “Fasten the shutters; nail 
down the window and put a blanket over it, so 
that not a ray of light can get out. Leave the 
door ajar and a dim light in the sitting room, so 
you can see both doors. Don’t answer any call 
unless it’s my voice.” 

“Your voice? You are going-” 

“To The Village. To warn Will and help there. 
If any one enters the house, keep still till they 
open the sitting-room door, and then aim straight 
and shoot to kill, Polly, as you do at the chicken 
hawks.” 

“Yes, Mayo; I will.” Her voice was as calm 
as if she were answering a request to sew on a 
button. With an unfaltering hand she took the 
gun she was accustomed to use with deadly exe¬ 
cution on birds of prey. 

“God bless you, dear!” Her husband took her 
in his arms and kissed her still, colorless face 
again and again. “Dick,” he said, “keep the gun 
and pistol loaded for your Cousin Polly. She’s 
better than the best man I know, in time of need.” 

He turned to go. 

“But, Mayo,” said his wife. “You must have 
firearms. Take a gun, the pistol.” 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 263 

“No.,” he said. “If that villain traces Anne 
here, you’ll need firearms. Anyway, the pistol 
would be mighty little use to me; I’d be an easy 
mark—on horseback, for them sneaking along in 
the dark. But I count on getting safe to The Vil¬ 
lage. They aren’t after me, you know. And 
what’s a man’s life for but to take in his two 
hands and put where it is needed?” He un¬ 
clasped her hands that clung to him. “If all goes 
well, I’ll be back-Oh! as soon as I can come.” 

He went out unarmed into the hostile night. 
The tense listeners heard his firm, light tread on 
the flagged walk, the restive mare’s whinny, and 
his soothing, “Whoa there! Gently, girl!” Then 
he galloped down the hill, whistling “Dixie.” 

Hour after hour passed. Anne tumbled down 
on the bed, to rest a while, and Dick, too, fell 
asleep. Mrs. Osborne sat there alone, very still 
and heedful, with the firearms at her hand. 

Once the collie sleeping on the porch gave a 
quick, short bark, yelping in a dream or at some 
little meaningless noise. Mrs. Osborne’s face 
brightened. “Mayo!” she breathed, bending to 
listen. But no horse hoofs rang on the road, no 
footsteps sounded on the walk; and gradually the 
light faded from her face, leaving it bleak and 
sharp. 

At last the early-morning farm noises began 



264 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

to be heard. Roosters crowed, a restless calf 
bawled and was answered by its lowing mother, 
the collie whined and scratched at the door. The 
east lightened for dawn. The gray sky became 
saffron and brightened to orange. Catbirds and 
thrushes sang, wrens twittered and crows cawed. 
There was the sweet, melancholy sound of cooing 
doves. Then came the pause when day seems to 
“stand tiptoe.” 

Mrs. Osborne went into the sitting room. She 
looked through the front window, down the road; 
quiet and untraveled, it lay there in the brighten¬ 
ing morning light. 

“If nothing had happened,” she said to her¬ 
self; “if he were safe-” 

She turned from the window, with her lips 
pressed tightly together. 

Now sunrays were creeping through the east¬ 
ern shutters,, and the farm creatures were grow¬ 
ing insistent in their calls. Mrs. Osborne 
wakened Anne and Dick, who were amazed and 
mortified to find that they had slept so long and 
left her to watch alone. 

“Why, it’s day, broad day!” exclaimed Anne. 
“Hasn’t Cousin Mayo come back?” 

“No.” 

“Isn’t that queer? I should think he’d be 
here,” said Dick. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 265 

He and Anne ran to look out of the window, 
but Mrs. Osborne sat silent, with averted face. 

“You look so tired, Cousin Polly!” said Anne. 
“Do lie down a little while. We’ll watch.” 

“No,,” Mrs. Osborne said quietly. “I am not 
tired. I must go out and feed the stock, and the 
pigeons.” 

“Let me do it,” said Dick. 

“We’ll help you,” said Anne. 

“No. You mustn’t go outdoors and risk be¬ 
ing seen. I’ll be back in a little while.” 

Mrs. Osborne made the rounds of the farm¬ 
yard. Last of all, she carried a bucketful of 
small grain to the pigeon cote, and scattered it 
on the ground. The pretty, gentle birds fluttered 
around her and alighted on her arms and shoul¬ 
ders. She stroked the shining plumage of one 
of her husband’s pets. Then her lips quivered 
and she dropped her face in her hands. 

“God help me!” she said. “If he were alive, 
he would have come back to me.” 

A few painful tears trickled between her fin¬ 
gers. But soon she regained her self-control 
and went indoors. 

“Anne, Dick,” she said, “if something had not 
happened, Mayo would have been back. I’ve 
stayed here all these hours because he said we 
must. Now I’m going to look for him.” 


266 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“And we are going with you,” Anne exclaimed. 

Mrs. Osborne considered a minute. “You’ll 
be just as safe,, I reckon,” she said. “Come on.” 

Dick ran ahead and opened the door. 

“Oh, Cousin Polly!” he cried. “There are 
people—two men—coming up the hill. It’s 
father and-” 

“Cousin Giles!” said Anne. 

She and Dick ran down the path, followed 
more slowly by Mrs. Osborne. She did not even 
hope to see her husband again, and it was with 
calm misery that she met Red Mayo and Giles 
Spotswood. At least she would have certainty 
instead of the terrible suspense of these long 
hours. 

Red Mayo Osborne ran forward and threw 
his arms around his son and Anne, and kissed 
first one and then the other. 

“Dick, my boy! Anne, dear little Anne! 
Thank God, you are safe!” exclaimed Red Mayo. 
“Mayo said you were safe with Polly.” 

“Where is Cousin Mayo?” asked Anne. 
“We’ve been looking and looking for him. to come 
back.” 

Red Mayo glanced away. He answered in a 
queer, hesitating voice. “He—he couldn’t come 
now.” 

Polly Osborne’s face was as pale as death and 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 267 

drawn with anguish. Red Mayo, keeping his eyes 
still averted, did not see it. She spoke in a firm, 
low voice: “What about Mayo?” 

“The fact is,” Mr. Spotswood said, “Mayo— 
he told me to tell you, Polly—Mayo—Mayo has 
been arrested.” 

“Arrested!” she repeated blankly. 

“Arrested,” Red Mayo said. “Jake Andrews 
came with a warrant. Arrested as—as a pro- 
German, or something. But—he ran away.” 

“What!” exclaimed Anne, in amazement. 

By degrees they got the story. Mr. Osborne 
had ridden to The Village, without seeing Caesar 
or Solomon Gabe or Isham. He quickly told his 
tale to the men who were waiting for him to start 
an organized search for Anne; had she and Dick 
reached Larkland a few minutes later, the de¬ 
serter would have found all the Villagers away in 
search of Anne, and the post office would have 
been easily rifled. As it was, the Village men 
hid in the post office and waited till Caesar came 
through a window and seized him. Only one of 
the older negroes, probably Solomon Gabe, came 
with Caesar to The Village; he stayed outside the 
office, and ran away when the fracas began in¬ 
side. They sent a few shots after him in the 
darkness, but evidently without effect. 

They carried Caesar to the jail and locked him 


268 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


in a cell, to await the officer who was to take him 
back to Camp Lee. 

And then in the early morning, just as Black 
Mayo was starting home, Jake Andrews rode up 
The Street. 

“Huh! You’re the man I’m looking for,” he 
said to Black Mayo, without any courtesies of 
greeting. “I was on my way to your house.” 

Black Mayo looked him up and down, without 
speaking. 

“I’ve got a warrant for your arrest,” Andrews 
said, producing a paper. 

“My arrest! On what charge, pray?” 

“Oh, there are charges enough; having traitors 
in your house, and being one yourself likely, 
and-” 

“Who preferred these charges against me?” 
inquired Mr. Osborne. 

“A good citizen, if he ain’t none of you-all’s 
aristocrats. You’ll find out who and what when 
your trial comes.” 

A dozen voices rose in protest. 

“That’s high-handed!” 

“Come, come, Jake! There’s a mistake some¬ 
where. Why, we all know Mayo Osborne. He’s 
all right.” 

“I know my duty, and I’ve got my warrant,” 
Andrews responded doggedly. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 269 

Mayo Osborne looked perplexed. “We’ve got 
to submit to law and officers,” he said, “Red, 
you and Giles go to Larkland, please—PollyTl 
be uneasy—and tell her about this arrest busi¬ 
ness—” He laughed—“and get Anne and Dick.” 

“We’re going to stand by you, you know,, 
Mayo,” said Red Mayo. “We know it wasn’t— 
wasn’t an intentional crime. It was perfectly 
natural you should not consider that your old 
friend was an enemy alien and that you should 
shelter Kuno Kleist-” 

“Kuno Kleist! What do you mean?” de¬ 
manded Black Mayo. 

“He was—wasn’t he?—the man who visited 
you secretly, who-” 

“That tall, fair man with a little pointed beard. 
If he wasn’t Kuno Kleist, who was he?” 

“I can’t tell you. I submit to arrest. But, Mr. 
Law Officer, will you explain why you are such 
an early bird, out at daybreak?” 

“I’m on my job,” replied Andrews. “A good 
citizen came to me in the night and said you were 
fixing to skip the country and-” 

Black Mayo considered this with a frown. 
Suddenly he gave a startled exclamation. 
“Charles Smith told you that?” he demanded 
sharply. 

“Yes; he-” 






2 7 o THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“That express! Redville at seven-thirty!” ex¬ 
claimed Black Mayo. 

Before any one had the ghost of an idea what 
he was going to do, he was out of the group, at 
the horse rack where Rosinante was tied, on her 
back, and galloped down the road. Andrews 
with an oath, jumped on his horse and pounded 
after him. 

Without a word, the little group watched the 
fleeing and the pursuing man till they were out of 
sight. Then they looked around at one another. 

“What on earth’s the meaning of it all ? ,J Will 
Blair asked everybody. 

No one tried to answer. 

But David Spotswood said: “I know two 
things: Cousin Mayo’s all right, and Jake An¬ 
drews will never catch him.” 

Red Mayo laughed. “Never! As Emma would 
say, he might as well try to plant a rose bush on 
the tail of a comet. Well, we must go and tell 
Polly.” And then his face grew sober. 


CHAPTER XVII 


B LACK Mayo did not spare his good horse, 
but the train whistled long before he 
reached Redville, and a desperate spurt of 
speed only brought him to the station as the train 
was pulling out. He flung himself off Rosinante 
and ran down the platform—just too late to 
clutch the rear railing of the last coach. 

There was no one in sight; the station agent 
did not meet this early train, and the telegraph 
office would not be open for another hour. 

Mr. Osborne stood a moment, looking after the 
departing train. Then, frowning, he got on 
Rosinante and rode slowly homeward. Half a 
mile from the station he met Jake Andrews, 
coming on merely because he had started, and 
much surprised at seeing the fugitive whom he 
had long ago given up hopes of overtaking. 

“Andrews,” Mr. Osborne said crisply, “come 
with me to Smith’s place. We must make cer¬ 
tain-” 

“Come with you!” Andrews recovered him¬ 
self enough to sneer. “You’ll come with me, 
under arrest.” 


271 



272 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Nonsense,, man!” Black Mayo threw open 
his coat and displayed a badge that made An¬ 
drews stare. “Don’t make yourself a bigger 
laughingstock than you’re bound to be when 
people find out you let yourself be that scoundrel’s 
tool.” 

“Wh-what do you mean, Mr. Mayo?” stam¬ 
mered Andrews. 

“Come and find out,” commanded Mr. Os¬ 
borne. 

Down the road they met a party of horsemen; 
Mr. Tavis, Mr. Blair—oh! the whole Village, as¬ 
tonished at Black Mayo’s arrest, was following 
after, hoping to have the mystery explained. 

But for the moment Black Mayo made no ex¬ 
planation. 

“Come!” he said,, hurrying on to the old Tolli¬ 
ver place. 

Albert Smith came out to meet them. His eye¬ 
lids were red, and he looked lonesome and miser¬ 
able, but he met Mr. Osborne’s eyes bravely and 
frankly answered his questions. His uncle had 
gone away very early that morning. 

“Exit Karl Schmidt, alias Charles Smith, Ger¬ 
man propagandist, bridge destroyer, et cetera!” 
said Black Mayo, looking around at his com¬ 
panions. 

There was a chorus of surprised exclamations. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 273 

“Where has he gone?” thundered Andrews,, 
turning to Albert. 

“I do not know, I do not want to know. I have 
nothing to tell you about my uncle,” the boy 
answered in a low, firm voice. 

“You’d better—” 

“Stop that!” Black Mayo checked Andrews’ 
blustering, and put a protecting hand on Albert’s 
shoulder. “But what are you to do, my boy?” 

Albert’s lip quivered. “My uncle said I might 
go to our cousin in New York. But I do not 
want that. I like it here. I like to study and war- 
garden and help liberty. I want to be American.” 

“Well, you can make plans later,” Mr. Os¬ 
borne said kindly. “Now get your horse and 
come home with me and let’s have our breakfast.” 

Albert went to the stable,, watched suspiciously 
by Jake Andrews, who began a mumbling which 
Black Mayo interrupted. “Oh, I forgot! Mr. 
Andrews has a warrant to serve against me. 
Shall we-” 

Andrews, turning fiery red, jerked out his war¬ 
rant and tore it in two. “And I let that man make 
a fool of me!” 

“Yes,” Black Mayo agreed tranquilly. 

“But if you knew all this—you had authority, 
being a Secret Service man—why didn’t you ar¬ 
rest him?” demanded Andrews. 



274 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“Because there were things we wanted to find 
out, details of a plot, proof against its leaders. I 
don’t mind telling now—you’re an officer of the 
law and these others are friends—the tall, fair 
man who came to Larkland was Thomas Milner. 
You’ve heard of him?” 

“Not the big Secret Service chap?” exclaimed 
Andrews. 

“Yes. I was in Washington, to make a report 
to him, when Smith sent you fellows to Larkland 
to nose about.” 

“If Mrs. Osborne had told me-” Andrews 

began to mumble. 

“She didn’t know; and she wouldn’t have told 
you if she had known.” 

“But why did Smith set us on you?” 

“Oh! partly revenge for a beating I gave him 
last year and a fracas we had later, and partly, 
no doubt, to shield himself from suspicion by 
turning it on me and my guest. If he had sus¬ 
pected who that guest was-” Black Mayo 

chuckled. 

“But what was Smith doing?” asked Mr. Blair. 

“This little out-of-the-way corner was a good 
place for him to lie quiet betweep jobs. He didn’t 
do much right here except some mischief-mak¬ 
ing among foolish negroes and silly whites.” 
Jake Andrews reddened, but Mr. Osborne did 




THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 275 

not look at him. “Instead of being a chewing- 
gum salesman, as he pretended, Smith had a nice 
little business of directing bomb throwers. He 
got plans of all the railroad bridges in this sec¬ 
tion, with a view to their destruction, so as to 
hinder troop movements. The high bridge was 
such a tempting mark that he wanted a whack 
at it himself, preferably with a troop train on it. 
I found out that just in time. 

“Now, Andrews, you’d better go to Red- 
ville; the telegraph office will be open. Mr. Jones 
comes down on that 8.45 train, and he must wire 
up and down the road, and see that Smith is ar¬ 
rested.” 

“HI do whatever you say, Mr. Osborne,” An¬ 
drews said humbly. 

“Here comes Albert. Well, folks, let’s go 
home. A fine morning for an early ride.” 

It was,, indeed, a glorious day, early Novem¬ 
ber in Southside Virginia. The sunshine lighted 
up the bright gold of hickory and the pale gold 
of down-fluttering locust leaves and the tawny 
purple of black haw and the rich or flaming reds 
of oaks and Virginia creeper, all the more splen¬ 
did against the steadfast green of pines. 

“Our woods look like an army with banners,” 
said Black Mayo. “Banners of victory ! It’s at 
hand,” he said confidently. 


2 J 6 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

Ever since Chateau-Thierry, the Allies had 
been on the offensive. The mittel-Europa dream 
of Germany faded as Bulgaria and Turkey and 
Austria-Hungary fell. Only Germany was left 
now. And all the world, and none better than 
the kaiser and Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 
knew that she soon must yield. “Retreat! re¬ 
treat! retreat!” was the one order. Never again, 
“Forward!” 

The victory news came two days later. David 
had ridden to Redville for the daily Dispatch, and 
he came galloping up The Street, waving a paper 
that had a big black headline: 

“ARMISTICE SIGNED!” 

The President had gone before Congress and 
given it the great tidings. “My fellow country¬ 
men: The armistice was signed this morning. 
Everything for which America fought has been 
accomplished. The war thus comes to an end.” 

For over four years Europe had been a battle¬ 
field for the nations of the world. The conflict 
was less between nations than between two prin¬ 
ciples: The right of kings to govern through 
armies, and the right of people to govern them¬ 
selves by law and justice. When the fate of the 
world seemed in doubt, America turned the scale 
for right and justice. 

A day or two after the great armistice news, 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 277 

Black Mayo went with the Village young folks 
to the Old Sterling Mine; they were all curious to 
see the scene of Anne and Dick’s perilous ad¬ 
venture. 

“I wish Albert had come with us.,” said David. 

“He preferred to stay at home,” said Mr. Os¬ 
borne. “Naturally he feels badly about his 
uncle’s arrest; the fellow’ll probably have a long 
term in a federal prison.” 

“What’ll become of Albert?” asked Anne. 

“Oh, he’ll get on all right. He’s a good little 
American,” replied Mr. Osborne. He did not 
say that he and his wife were planning to adopt 
the little fellow who had endeared himself to them 
both. 

“Our boys will be coming back soon,” rejoiced 
David. 

“Those who are left of them,” Anne said 
soberly. 

Alas! there was a gold star for Mrs. Hight’s 
son William, and Jeff Spencer was still missing. 
But the other Village boys would have honorable 
discharges, and Fayett Mallett was bringing 
back a Croix de Guerre . 

“If only I had been older-” David began 

enviously. 

“Well,” Mr. Osborne said, “I wanted to go, 
too, but if I had and we had lost our bridge and 



278 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

perhaps a trainload of soldiers or supplies- 

Ah, David, we stay-at-homes can look our sol¬ 
dier boys in the face and say, 'We, too, did our 
part.’ Those brave fellows over there would 
have been helpless if we here hadn’t been brave 
enough to do our duty.” 

Anne had been walking quietly along beside 
Mr. Osborne. Now she said in an undertone, 
"Cousin Mayo, I-” Then she stopped. 

"Well, Anne?” 

"Cousin Mayo, I—I-” Then she blurted 

out, "I was to blame about their thinking—about 
your arrest.” 

"You to blame? Of course not!” 

"The stranger I saw at Larkland that morn¬ 
ing—I thought—I said it was Kuno Kleist. And 
Jake Andrews heard me.” 

"It was Mr. Milner. As I did not present you 
to him, you ought not to have mentioned him or 
guessed his name. The lips of an honorable guest 
are sealed to the secrets of a house.” Mr. Os¬ 
borne spoke gravely; The Village had its standard 
of good breeding not to be lowered for its young 
people; they must rise to it. 

"Yes, Cousin Mayo,,” said Anne. "I’m awful 
sorry. I was so excited, thinking it was Kuno 
Kleist.” 

"I thought so, too,” said Patsy. 





THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 279 

“You will never see Kuno, my dears,,” Mr. Os¬ 
borne said sadly. “He is dead.” 

“Dead!” 

“Murdered. His sister wrote to me from 
Switzerland. He came home once on a furlough, 
and she asked him if the tales were true about 
brutalities to conquered people. He said: T hope 
those things will not be required of me; I am a 
human being before I am a German.’ 

“A month later came the news that he had 
been shot for refusing to obey orders. She 
learned the details later from a comrade. An old 
Frenchman had fired on a drunken German sol¬ 
dier who insulted his daughter, and Kuno was 
one of a squad ordered to shoot a dozen citizens 
in retaliation—men and women and children 
drawn by lot. Kuno refused. He was put in 
front of the firing squad and was shot by his 
own comrades.” 

“I am so sorry,,” Anne said softly. 

“I am so glad,” Black Mayo said, with a tender 
smile. “Death was his only gate to freedom from 
the wicked tyranny of Prussia.” 

“Old Prussia’s beat at last, thanks be!” said 
Patsy. “What will the Allies do to the Germans, 
Cousin Mayo?” 

“Say to them, as Julius Caesar said to the Ger¬ 
mans two thousand years ago: ‘Go back whence 


280 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


you came, repair the damage you have done, and 
give hostages to keep the peace for the future !’ ” 

“Peace!” said Anne. “Your doves are birds 
of peace now,, Cousin Mayo.” 

“And again they find a deluged world.” 

“Oh, sound gladder, Cousin Mayo!” cried Dick. 
“We’ve won the war; and—thanks to Albert and 
me helping this year—we walloped the girls in 
garden work and took the silver cup. Oh, it’s a 
fine old world!” He danced a jig on the road¬ 
side. 

His cousin smiled in sympathy. “I don’t want 
to be a wet blanket, young uns,” he said. “We 
did splendid work in war. When I look ahead, 
I see such stupendous peace tasks that—well, it 
makes me solemn. Oh, well! we’ll grope and 
stumble a little, but we are on an upward path, 
with old ideals and new vision ahead of us—and 
thank God for the leader with vision.” 

This talk brought them to the top of the long 
hill that led to Mine Creek. 

“There’s Unc’ Isham’s cabin, still as a grave¬ 
yard,” remarked Dick. “I wonder where he and 
Aunt Lily Belle are?” 

“They ran away because they’re scared of be¬ 
ing punished,,” said Steve. 

“They’d better be scared; mean things!” ex¬ 
claimed Patsy. 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


281 

“Oh! Unc’ Isham didn’t want to hurt me,” said 
Anne. “He was just afraid to tell where I was. 
It was mighty comforting to hear the way he 
talked.” 

“I say it was!” Dick agreed emphatically. 
“The old nig was in a tight place, with Caesar 
threatening to kill him.” 

“And there’s Solomon Gabe’s house,” said 
David. 

The door was open; but the house was a mere 
shell from which its occupant had gone forever. 
When his son was captured, the half-crazed old 
negro had rushed back to his poor little home 
and, overcome by haste and terror, he had fallen 
dead on the threshold. There the officers of the 
law had found him. 

“It was Solomon Gabe—poor old misguided 
wretch!—who set fire to Broad Acres,” said Mr. 
Osborne. 

“What! Did he burn Broad Acres?” ex¬ 
claimed Patsy. 

“Oh, Cousin Mayo! How do you know?” 
asked Alice. 

“Dick heard Emma say that night that 'the 
old devil was burning little Miss Anne.’ At first 
I couldn’t get anything out of her; she insisted it 
was Satan she meant. But, now that Solomon 
Gabe is dead, she confesses that he told her the 


282 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


night before not to let Mary Jane sleep at Broad 
Acres; ‘the torch of the Lord was lit for that 
house/ She kept her daughter at home; and then 
she was afraid to tell, partly for fear of being 
blamed herself and still more from fear of Solo¬ 
mon Gabe. I’m pretty sure he put the glass in the 
flour at Larkland. He was at the mill that day, 
I remember.” 

“Do you reckon any of the other darkies knew 
about it?” asked Anne. 

“They probably knew a little and suspected 
more; like Emma they were afraid to tell.” 

“Louviny talked mighty queer one day when 
Patsy and I were there,” said Anne. 

“Smith had made all sorts of promises and 
threats to her and Lincum,” said Mr. Osborne. 
“When Kit destroyed the war gardens, he was 
merely acting in the spirit of what he heard at 
home. Scalawag told us about that; didn’t he, 
Billy boy?” 

“Yes, sirree!” said Sweet William, waggling 
his head proudly. “Hasn’t anybody helped war 
gardens more than me and Scalawag.” 

“Look here, Anne! Here’s where I found 
your footprints, turning from the road up to the 
path,” said Dick. 

“I saw somebody through the bushes; I thought 
it was you, and I followed, down that ladder; and 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 283 

then that man—I didn’t know who he was— 
pushed me in the pit and pulled out the ladder. 
Oh, Dick! here’s where I thought they had us, on 
the way out. I stepped on a twig, and it snapped 
—like a pistol shot it sounded.” Anne shuddered 
at the memory. 

“What—who’s that?” Dick exclaimed, looking 
earnestly into the woods at the left. 

“Nothing; nobody,” David said carelessly. 
“Well, here’s your mine hole, with the ladder in 
it still.” 

They all went into the mine and examined it 
with a great deal of interest, especially the hole 
in which Anne and Dick had hidden. Black Mayo 
lingered there after the others were ready to 

go- 

“This place looks as if it had been intentionally 
and carefully concealed,” he said; “the hole was 
covered with poles and then a layer of dirt over 
it. I wonder why? Suppose we investigate a 
little. We have plenty of time.” 

“Mother says she never expects us back till 
night when we go off with you,” laughed Patsy. 

“Righto!” said Mr. Osborne. “Dickon, haven’t 
you some mining tools hereabouts, a spade and 
pick and shovel ?” 

“Yes, sir.” Dick grinned. 

“Well, we’ll get ready to use them. I’ll show 


284 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

you mining methods used by the old Phoenicians 
and by the Mexicans to-day. Let’s pile these 
poles and logs against the face of the rock.” 

The old timbers were piled as Black Mayo di¬ 
rected. Then he put leaves and twigs under the 
dry wood. 

“It’s your party, Dick,” he said, when all was 
ready. “You may stick a match to the kindling, 
and then we’ll flee to the open. We couldn’t 
stand the smoke. Besides we’ve work to do out 
there.” 

As the bonfire flared and roared, they went 
scrambling up the ladder. 

“Now,” said Black Mayo, “we’ll go to Peter 
Jim’s cabin and borrow all his buckets and tubs. 
We must fill them with water and have it ready.” 

“Ready for what?” inquired Dick. 

“I’ll show you presently,” said Black Mayo. 

The wondering young folks carried out his 
instructions, and then sat around the old mine 
from which smoke poured as from a chimney. 

All at once Dick again said sharply, “What’s 
that?” He looked down the wooded, rocky slope 
to the left. “I knew I saw somebody!” he ex¬ 
claimed, and ran down the hill. 

There was a rustle and stir in a clump of chin¬ 
quapin bushes. The foliage parted and a black 
face peered out,, a man’s frightened, pathetic old 


THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 285 

face. Suddenly a pair of bony black arms were 
thrust out wildly from behind, clutched the woolly 
head, and dragged it back. There was a violent 
struggle, and screeches and sobs and loud, ex¬ 
cited talking. 

“Oh, Dick, Dick! Come back!” Patsy screamed 
in terror. 

For Dick had vanished in the thicket, the 
scene of that strange commotion. Mr. Osborne 
and David and Steve ran to find him and to see 
what was the matter. 

Just then Dick reappeared, followed by an old 
negro man with a woman tugging at his coat 
tails. It was Isham and Lily Belle. 

“Come on away!” she was wailing. “Uh, 
what you let ’em see you for? My old man, my 
old man! Dey got to kill me, too, when dey 
kill you.” 

“Hush that racket. You’re all right,” said 
Dick. 

Isham went to Anne and put up appealing 
hands. “I didn’t mean you no harm, Miss Anne,” 
he sobbed. “I wouldn’t ’a’ teched a hair o’ yore 
head.” 

“I know you wouldn’t,, Unc’ Isham,” said 
Anne. “Oh, don’t cry! Do stop crying! Oh! 
we’re so glad to see you. We’ve wondered where 
you were.” 


286 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 

“We runned away,” said Lily Belle. “We— 
we started to runned away—an’—an’-” 

“Den we crope back,” said Isham. “We done 
lived here all our lives, an’ we couldn’t go traip¬ 
sin’ ’round strange neighborhoods. We ruther 
you-all would kill us here at home.” 

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Anne assured 
them. “We know you didn’t mean any harm. 
Oh, Uncle Isham ! Dick and I were hiding in a 
hole in the mine,, and we heard you telling Caesar 
he mustn’t hurt me. We are all your friends, 
and you’re just as safe as we are.” 

Lily Belle forgot her fears. “I told you so, old 
man,” she cried; “I told you to come on out them 
bushes. Ain’t nobody gwine to hurt us. Our 
white folks is gwine to take keer of us. Um, 
um! Come on home, old man; an’ ain’t we glad 
to git back!” 

By this time the smoke came in lessening 
swirls from the mine hole. Mr. Osborne and the 
boys carried the tub into the mine and set it at 
the edge of the hole, and filled it with water! 

“Now for a smotheration!” he said. 

He poured bucketful after bucketful of water 
on the hot rock. It filled the air with choking, 
blinding steam; and through its hissing came 
time after time, like pistol shots, the popping of 
the rock. 



THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 287 

As soon as the steam cleared away a little, 
Black Mayo and the boys set to work with pick 
and hammer. In a few minutes a large piece 
of the split rock was broken off. The gray-green 
mass was full of glittering specks and streaks. 

“Well, my boy, you found it!” said Mr. Os¬ 
borne, turning to Dick. 

“Found it?” echoed the boys and girls who 
were crowding around. 

“Found the lost vein of silver. It was true, 
then, that tale about the rascally mine manager. 
Evidently he concealed this place, hoping to get 
possession of the mine and work it. But he died 
without being able to carry out his plan. And 
now the mine comes back to its rightful owners.” 

“Its rightful owners!” stammered Dick. He 
had not thought of any right except the right of 
discovery. “Rightful owner!” he repeated in 
dismay, remembering that this land had been 
bought by Mr. Smith. 

“Yes; to your father and me, among other 
heirs,” said his cousin. “Our grandfather never 
lost faith in the mine, and when he sold the land 
he reserved the mineral rights. Your tumbling 
into this hole was a lucky accident. But for that, 
the secret of the old mine’s treasure might have 
remained hidden another half century, and you 
and I might have died without knowing it. 


288 THE OLD MINE’S SECRET 


“We surely might.” Dick’s eyes grew grave, 
then he turned with a shining face to his young 
cousin. “Ah, Anne! that’s a real treasure hole. 
Silver isn’t the”— he went closer to her and 
dropped his voice—“the dearest thing it’s kept 
hidden and safe. But for it—oh! what would 
have become of you that awful night?” 


































































































































































































































































